Populism and Surrogacy in Spain

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).

Notes

¹ For information on the outcome of the 2015 national elections, please see “Election for Spanish Congress of Deputies.”

² Previous research has found that more than 1,000 intended parents from Spain a year pursue surrogacy abroad. Of these, approximately 20% are single men and gay couples. When choosing where to pursue surrogacy, intended parents must take into account a number of potential ramifications, including legal, financial, and safety (Navarro 579).

³ Populism is not inherently “left” or “right,” and can be found across the political spectrum. Populists on the left tend to define the people in more inclusive terms, identifying them “by their non elite political status and their generalized political disempowerment” (Roberts 646). Typical of populism in Latin America (Mudde and Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary” 148), this variety of populism has also emerged in Southern Europe (Roberts 642; Vachudova 474). Populists on the right are best described as “ethnopopulists,” which “cast the people as part of an ethnicity, culture, nation, religion, race, or even civilization that is under threat” (Vachudova 475).

⁴ Descriptive representation means that representatives are “in some sense typical of the larger class of persons whom they represent” (Mansbridge 629). For example, “Black legislators represent Black constituents, women legislators represent women constituents, and so on” (629).

⁵ All translations are ours.

⁶ Throughout Europe, surrogacy is illegal, with the exception being Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. See Cuddy “Where in Europe is surrogacy legal?” for more information on the specifics for each country.

⁷ There are no anti-surrogacy laws at the EU level. See Brunet “A Comparative Study on the Regime of Surrogacy in EU Member States” for more information.

⁸ For more information on this aspect of surrogacy, please see Serra Alcega.

⁹ For more information on Spain as a top destination for fertility tourism, please see Fillon.

¹⁰ On the website for Profesionales por la ética, they state that their purpose is to divulge “análisis riguroso de la realidad sociopolítica y de las implicaciones éticas que conlleva. A partir del mismo, elaboramos propuestas y campañas de divulgación a fin de generar conciencia social y sensibilizar a instituciones, legisladores y decisores sobre la necesidad de cambios legislativos acordes con la dignidad de la persona y sus derechos fundamentales” (“rigorous analysis of the sociopolitical reality and the ethical implications it carries. From this premise, we elaborate proposals and awareness campaigns to generate social consciousness and raise the awareness of institutions, legislators and decision makers about the necessity of legislative changes in agreement with the dignity of the person and their fundamental rights”).

¹¹ The reasons are: the interest of the child, the right to procreate, gestation does not negatively affect the psychological health of the gestator, the control of possible exploitation, the limiting of reproductive tourism, the prevailing trend in comparative law, feminist positions, the weakening of the biological conviction, the principles of equality and nondiscrimination, the differences between law and morality, and the advancement and evolution of law.

¹² Being a thin-centered ideology means that populism is a “belief system of limited range” with “limited programmatic scope” (Mudde and Kaltwasser, “Studying Populism” 1669). Thus, populism can then easily be attached to a variety of other political ideas (1669). Paul Taggart describes populism as “an empty heart” that can easily be filled with a variety of political positions (4). This is different from classical ideologies such as fascism, communism, or liberalism (Mudde and Kaltwasser, “Studying Populism” 1669).

¹³ It is important to note that there are other conceptual approaches that scholars have taken to understanding populism (Kaltwasser et al.). We have chosen to use this “ideational” approach in order to link our work to the growing comparative research on populism, as this approach is “particularly well-suited” for this task (Mudde and Kaltwasser, “Studying Populism” 1668).

¹⁴ Since the 2016 general elections, Podemos had been the leading member of an electoral alliance with several smaller parties. Originally called “Unidos Podemos,” the alliance was rebranded as “Unidas Podemos” to make their feminist affiliations clearer (Marcos).

¹⁵ The Congress of Deputies has a total of 350 members.

¹⁶ This was emphasized by former party leader Albert Rivera, who stated that the left-right political axis no longer exists in Spain (Amón).

¹⁷ There are no official statistics on the number of children born to surrogates contracted by Spanish parents. The organization Son Nuestros Hijos estimates that around 800 children each year are born to surrogate mothers contracted by Spanish parents in the United States alone (Cañas). Many heterosexual Spanish couples turn to less expensive options in countries like Ukraine (Kramer).