Italians surrogacy solution in Argentina

Two Italian males were arrested at Buenos Aires airport on October 25 as they tried to leave Argentina with a baby born to a “rent-a-womb” mother.

Suspicions were first aroused on October 23 when an 18-year-old woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, visited the information desk at the Aeroparque international airport in Buenos Aires with one of the men.

She told officials that the 26-year-old oncologist from Padua was the father of her child born on October 10, and she wanted to authorise him to take the baby, who had already been issued with a passport, to Italy the next day.

Having been given such short notice, the officials looked closely her ID and saw that the young woman had never left the country or possessed a passport and was from Rosario, 300 kilometres from the capital.

Records also showed that the Italian, an oncologist from Padua, visited Argentina in July, 2023, in March this year and on October 7, three days before the baby was born.  On each occasion, he was accompanied by another man and simple arithmetic suggested the full-term baby could not be his.

Surrogate mother’s story didn’t convince officials

Immigration refused to issue the authorisation and passed on the case to the closest federal court to the airport, which launched an investigation.

Undeterred, the two men turned up at Ministro Pistarini, Buenos Aires’s principal airport on October 25 with the baby and her mother, who had been issued with an emergency passport the previous day.

Immigration had already flagged up their case and a court order preventing the baby from leaving the country arrived while the party of four waited in the pre-boarding area.

The court must now decide whether the two men are to be charged with people trafficking, child-selling or appropriation of children.

Intermediaries paid surrogate mother one-tenth of their fee

The 18-year-old who initially maintained that she had borne the child out of altruism without any financial reward, later revealed that she had been paid 10 million pesos (€9,271) to carry and give birth to the child.

This was probably one-tenth of the amount the two men would have paid the go-betweens, a source close to the case told the Argentinean media.

The victim was the baby, they said, while those who deserved to be under investigation were the intermediaries.

According to media reports, the girl, already the mother of a small girl, had never finished school and was in a very bad economic situation.  She told investigators that she had been an egg donor in the past, as had other young women in the marginalised neighbourhood where she lived in Rosario.

“She is in an extremely vulnerable situation,” the same source said.

Surrogacy was already banned inside Italy when, on October 16, parliament voted 84-58 to make it illegal to have a baby via a surrogate outside the country. Breaking the law can now result in a two-year prison term and a fine of up to €1 million.

This latest case coincided with an ongoing enquiry into surrogacy led by judge Maria Capuchetti who is analysing 147 Buenos Aires births which include 49 babies born to foreigners not resident in Argentina.

Those under investigation include medical centres, notaries, lawyers and intermediaries who put would-be parents in touch with women supposedly prepared to carry a child for altruistic reasons.