According to a report in the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag, the Swiss ban on surrogate motherhood is circumvented via foreign countries more often than previously thought.
The newspaper refers to a survey of the cantonal civil status authorities. According to the survey, 48 children of surrogate mothers were registered last year alone – twice as many as in 2016. Over the past four years, there were 144 children registered nationwide. Most of them were born in the United States, followed by Ukraine and Canada.
These figures are higher than the federal government’s previous estimates, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg, suggests the report – which describes a package deal in Ukraine that includes a prosthetic pregnancy belly for the “expecting” mother to wear in Switzerland. Experts suspect that the practice is much more widespread, and that as many as 1,000 surrogate-born children are already living in this country.
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Switzerland’s highest court had annulled a decision which allowed two men in a registered partnership to both be considered the father of a child born in 2011 via assisted reproduction. The child was born in California to a surrogate mother through artificial insemination. The sperm of one of the men and the egg of an…
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Swiss parliament pushes forward on same sex-marriage
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Same-sex couples should be able to get married and lesbians should have access to sperm donation, says the House of Representatives.
In Switzerland, having a child is becoming a luxury
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Women in Switzerland are having fewer children, and they are having them later. Our series on parenting in Switzerland explores why.
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.