Surrogacy in the Philippines (2023 Update)

In this video, Page Provan Director and award-winning surrogacy lawyer, Stephen Page, updates us about a bill introduced to regulate assisted reproductive treatment in the Philippines and to regulate and allow surrogacy.

Transcript

G’day, Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers, and I’m talking about surrogacy for Australians in the Philippines.

I’ve previously talked and written about surrogacy in the Philippines, and I’d always taken the view that there was an absence of law there, except about human trafficking, which was worrying.

Now, the Philippines being, I thought, the only country in the world that banned divorce, being a conservative Catholic country, and then being told, no, no, no, there’s another one, the Vatican City, the Holy See, and I thought, well, the tiny size of the Vatican City, and who lives there?

One wouldn’t think the divorce would be even on the agenda. But anyway, that’s where we are with the Philippines. It’s a conservative place. It does have IVF, but doesn’t have donation or hasn’t had donation in the past. But things slowly are changing, and it’s a watch this space moment currently.

In March, a representative of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, introduced a bill to regulate assisted reproductive treatment in the Philippines and to regulate and allow surrogacy and he noted that the Philippine Society of Reproductive Medicine had recorded in 2019, 50 births through surrogacy.

So, surrogacy is happening in the Philippines. There isn’t any way to transfer parentage, so that makes it really difficult. The surrogate remains as the mother, and there’s always a concern that authorities might see it as human trafficking.

But it is doable, I would say it would be only available to heterosexual couples, at least through IVF clinics at this point. Certainly, the bill is suggesting only for heterosexual couples and maybe from recollection for single women, but certainly not for gay couples.

So, Philippines, watch this space moment, we’ll see what happens with it. Hopefully, there’s some movement there, and hopefully, there will be a regulatory regime to allow surrogacy, as opposed to what we’ve got at the moment, which is largely a vacuum. Thank you.