Today is a “huge, historic, emotional and incredibly exciting” day for hundreds of families with children born through surrogacy, according to Rosanna Davison.
The former Miss World is welcoming the report of the joint Oireachtas Committee on International Surrogacy.
Among the 32 recommendations in the report, the committee is calling for both parents of a child born through an international surrogacy agreement should be legally recognised as parents.
It is also calling for the establishment of a National Surrogacy Register for children to be able to access their own information when they reach 12 years of age.
The committee is also calling for all international surrogates to be financially and legally protected.
"Historic"
Rosanna’s daughter Sophia was born through surrogacy in 2019 and on The Pat Kenny Show this morning, she welcomed the report.
“This is a huge, historic, emotional and incredibly exciting day for my family and hundreds of families across Ireland with children born through surrogacy,” she said.
“Like many of them, we dreamt of having a baby. It didn’t work out in the traditional way, so we went down the surrogacy route.
“You don’t’ choose surrogacy lightly either but we were successful and I suppose we just felt we would deal with the legal challenges along the way as they happened.
“But with this set of recommendations, it paves the way for other couples to be able to pursue surrogacy and not face the challenges we have faced.
“So, it’s huge. It’s historic.”
Surrogacy
Like many mothers who went the surrogacy route, the Irish State currently does not recognise Rosanna’s biological daughter as her daughter.
She had the option to register herself as Sophia’s legal guardian when she reached the age of two; however, she chose not to do so in the hopes the law would change.
Her legal right to guardianship would have ended when Sophia turned 18 and if anything happened to her husband Wes or if their relationship broke down, she would have been left with “no legal rights over Sophia as her mother, parent or protector”.
View this post on Instagram
“I have two twin boys, Hugo and Oscar, born naturally in 2020 and I was dreading the day I would have to have the conversation with Sophia and explain to her that not only did I not carry her, but she is not seen as equal to them in the eyes of the law despite them being siblings and despite them all being my biological children,” she said.
“I feel now I can explain all that to her when she is older, and the time is right but I won’t have to know that she is growing up feeling unequal to her brother.
“There are so many different reasons why we are celebrating today and why it is so important for Irish children and Irish families and also for the women and men in future who will go down the surrogacy route.”
She said it is now essential that the recommendations are written into law as soon as possible.
“It’s an historic day and it is such a relief to know we have got to this point,” she said.
You can listen back here:
