Colombia’s congress to debate bill prohibiting surrogacy

The bill to ban surrogacy in Colombia will undergo the first of four required debates in the coming days, Rep. Luis Miguel López Aristizábal, the bill’s author, announced.

“The proposal for the bill that would ban ‘rent-a-womb’ or surrogacy in Colombia has just been formally submitted. This means that in the next few days, we will hold the first of the four debates that this bill requires,” the congressman from the Conservative Party stated.

The bill was introduced in mid-August in response to calls from the Constitutional Court in four separate rulings to enact legislation regarding surrogacy, an area currently lacking legal regulation, which is being exploited by private clinics, with “direct consequences for the fundamental rights of the women who carry the pregnancies and the children born through this practice.”

On his social media, López stated that “the lobbying by clinics has been truly incredible; however, we believe that the majority of Colombians support this bill. And not just that, I hope it will be passed unanimously in the Congress of the Republic, as it has the backing of various voting blocs.”

“We need this to be prohibited quickly to protect our children…