Abstract:
Surrogacy is a contract by which a woman accepts to bear a child for someone else, then abandon it at birth and hand it over to the contracting party. Currently Reproductive Human Rights of Women is recognaized and protected with in international and national human right instruments of different countries in the world. However due to infertility not all women enjoy this right. Assisted Reproductive Technology especially through surrogacy, which is currently becoming a booming global business, tries to solve the problem of infertility. Though technological advancement comes up with surrogacy as a solution the legal status of surrogacy varies across countries. Some countries allow surrogacy as legal, while other totally prohibits it as illegal. Some other countries also make surrogacy unregulated and other countries make commercial surrogacy illegal and make noncommercial surrogacy legal within their national laws. As Ethiopia is part and parcel of global world there are evidences which show Ethiopian women make a surrogate motherhood agreement in abroad countries sending them by illegal brokers since 2006 to alleviate their economical problem.1 In Ethiopia it is difficult to punish the surrogate, medical experts, commissioning parents and the brokers as in the FDRE Criminal Code surrogacy is not prohibited as a crime. In Ethiopia the FDRE Family Code says "maternal filiation is ascertained from the sole fact that the woman have given birth to the child". In other words, this code understand the surrogate mother is the legal mother of the child, even if she has no genetic relation to the child, while the commissioning mother has no legal relation to the child, even if she is the genetic mother. In addition this code presumes "A child conceived or born in wedlock has the husband as father". In Ethiopia the concept of surrogacy is in blurred mood between the fact and the law. Now a days due to surrogate motherhood Ethiopian law principle of proofing biological motherhood, biological fatherhood and knowing legal status of the childhood becomes argumentative one because surrogacy requires changes in the legal regulation of parentage and challenges traditional accounts of motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood, pregnancy and family status. These problems necessitate the study. In the study Doctrinal Methodology was adopted due to surrogacy is not practiced in Ethiopian jurisdiction. Although surrogacy is another arsenal for violation of women reproductive right, considers women as ordinary exchange goods and surrogacy arrangements made child a saleable commodity, and complications have arisen regarding the rights of the surrogate mother, the child, and the commissioning parents, the legal status of surrogacy Ethiopian legal system is not clearly regulated. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze legal protection against surrogacy as threat to reproductive human rights of women including the child under Ethiopian legal system in comparison with International human right instruments to which Ethiopia is a party. Finally recommendation is forwarded to the problem.
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