On the other side of the world, a 58-year-old German citizen showed up at a hospital in her country with a three-month-old baby, born in Buenos Aires and with an Argentine passport. The girl was in terrible health conditions, the doctors said. It was clear to the professionals that the woman was not fit to care for her and they called the police. Immediately, the woman and her partner, also German, were removed from temporary custody and the child was momentarily handed over to a substitute family.
Under the hot summer sun at the end of January, the complaint from the Argentine Foreign Ministry went unnoticed on Comodoro Py’s radar. After almost ten months of investigation in absolute secrecy, in the last hours Justice determined raids and proceedings in medical institutions, notary offices and legal studies of the Federal Capital, the province of Buenos and the province of Santa Fe, revealed to Infobae judicial sources.
What is investigated is a illicit business with transnational characteristics dedicated to the exploitation of the bodies of pregnant women – through what is called “womb surrogacy” -. Those interested paid about USD 50 thousand. They offered the pregnant women 10 thousand, with a bonus if it was by cesarean section. The difference was left to the intermediaries.
The case is in the hands of the judge María Eugenia Capuchetti and the prosecutor Alejandra Mánganowith the collaboration of the Office of the Prosecutor for Human Trafficking and Exploitation (PROTEX), led by that official and her colleague Marcelo Colombo.
The international scene was not immune to the growth of the business: in recent years, Ukraine had become one of the most important centers for surrogacy programs and attracted hundreds of couples from all over the world. But the military invasion of Russia forced them to look for other places to continue with these pregnancies. Argentina ended up being an ideal country due to the economic crisis and the fragility of the regulations on the matter.
The problem is that here In Argentina there is a legal vacuum. Neither Law No. 26,862 on comprehensive access to medical care procedures and techniques for medically assisted reproduction, nor the National Civil and Commercial Code regulate surrogacy. It is not regulated but since the practice is not prohibited, it is carried out. With a key detail: the woman who accepts this surrogacy You must do it altruistically.
Throughout the country, the intervention of family justice is mandatory to authorize or approve surrogacy processes, except for the city of Buenos Aires where an agreement is valid before public notaries and the registration of the baby in the Civil Registry as child of the person who will keep the baby.
In Córdoba, another case is already underway that investigates whether 14 women in poverty had been hired to give birth in exchange for money and then had been left helpless.
The case that was born in the Comodoro Py courts, in Buenos Aires, began on January 25 with the complaint made by the Litigation Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship. There it was reported that the Consulate of the Argentine Republic in the City of Bonn of the Federal Republic of Germany had been contacted by staff of the Provincial Directorate for Minors of the Federated State of Saarland that reported the admission of an Argentine baby to the hospital with signs of abuse.
From there, an investigation was opened in the Argentine courts. How did that girl get there? The baby had been registered in the Registry of the Civil Status and Capacity of Persons of the City of Buenos Aires under the protection of Provision 122/DGRC/20 (which enables the process via notary).
The baby who was hospitalized in Germany was born after a fertilization process carried out in a private medical institution in Buenos Aires through surrogacy. But the investigation that reached Comodoro Py determined something else: It was not an isolated case..
Of the 147 files corresponding to surrogacy cases carried out between 2018 and last April in the Federal Capital, it emerged that in at least 49 of them the principals (who will assume the maternity and/or paternity of the baby) They had common characteristics to the case of the German baby: foreign people of different nationalities, mostly with residence addresses outside the Argentine Republic and who, in some cases, had not even provided genetic material, as revealed to Infobae the sources consulted.
Nor would it have been accredited the emotional bond with pregnant women so that it could be inferred that the medical procedures of assisted reproduction technique were carried out directly, with prior knowledge of the people subjected to this practice and without the intermediation of people who obtain an economic benefit from these practices.
Furthermore, in none of these cases did civil judges intervene to authorize the procedure nor to establish filiation, but exclusively notaries or notaries who obtained supposed contractual consents based on statements that could be established to be wholly or partially false. For this reason, prosecutor Mangano investigates whether, in the same way as in “case 1” – the baby in Germany – they intervened in these other cases. a series of intermediaries who were the ones who would ultimately obtain large profits from the exploitation of pregnant women in a clearly vulnerable situation and the commercialization of boys and girls born in national territory.
After months of silent work, last Wednesday, Judge Capuchetti ordered a series of raids that had been requested by the Mangano prosecutor’s office, which included medical institutions, notary offices and legal firms in this city, the province of Buenos and the province of Santa Faith. The ordered procedures were carried out simultaneously by the Human Trafficking and Cybercrime Divisions of the Federal Police, led by Commissioner Marcela Hurt and Commissioner Adrián Acosta.
People and companies that advertised the services they provided through different means of communication abroad. There they openly contacted couples who wanted to have children – who could not carry out a pregnancy – and They offered them a “service” called “Argentina Program” with an approximate value of US$50,000. It included the selection of the pregnant person, the acquisition of the embryos to be implanted, the treatment, regular pregnancy check-ups and subsequent delivery.
The other side of this “business,” researchers believe, is the system of recruitment of pregnant women: companies contacted women through social networks, and taking advantage of their socioeconomic needs They offered them USD 10,000 to carry out the pregnancy. There they added a “plus” of between USD 1,000 and 2,000 if the delivery was by cesarean section.
As established, If for any reason the pregnancy was interrupted, the companies involved refused to make payments, except the amounts that would have been paid for minimum monthly expenses. Thus, the actors involved took advantage of the women’s situation of poverty and vulnerability by offering them ten thousand dollars in exchange for making the necessary attempts to cause a pregnancy, go through the pregnancy with all the corresponding controls, and deliver the child born by this practice, all of this without taking into account the possible physical and emotional consequences – proven in the case – that this type of practices can have on pregnant women, the prosecutor’s office said.
The final purpose of this illicit business was the registration of the child and its subsequent delivery. To do this, the companies involved in the business took advantage of the insufficient comptroller provided for in the local regulations of the Autonomous City of Buenos Airess, thereby guaranteeing that birth registrations were carried out, even when the pregnant people resided and had undergone treatment in other provinces of the country.
For investigators, this entire sophisticated business scheme was articulated with the sole purpose of achieving the birth of a baby to give it to a couple who in many cases were of foreign origin without residence in the country, with whom they have no genetic link. , cultural or social. That was the fate of the baby who was taken to Germany and ended up in a hospital.
Behind it is a system of agencies dedicated to the selection of surrogate mothers, agencies that contact foreign people seeking to become parents, fertility clinics and notaries, taking advantage of the socioeconomic needs that countless women can go through, a weak national regulation on the matter. and registration in this City of Buenos Aires. “Guaranteed reproductive tourism”, sources told Infobae.