Giorlandino: Surrogacy is a defeat for the women who use it

The specialist after the bill that introduces the universal crime: 'the 'limbic imprinting' is lost

ROME – “Surrogacy, which cyclically returns to be talked about, outside and above political prohibitions, as in our country, or the condemnations of some religions, as ours is a reproductive process that deprives women or defeats them of the most profound aspects of motherhood.” This was stated by Claudio Giorlandino, General Director of the Italian College of Fetal Maternal Medicine and scientific director of the Altamedica Research Center who spoke after the green light from the Senate Justice Commission < /strong>to the bill that introduces the universal crime of surrogacy.
“First of all, it should be remembered that there has been, since the 1980s, a different series of surrogacy cases which have, as common denominator, the fact that the child is genetically derived from the genetic mother (called “intended parent”) but not from the one who carries him in the womb (called “gestational carrier”) – explains the expert – In the most frequent case the embryo is created using the father’s sperm and an egg from the mother who desire the child (“intended parents”). Or the embryo is created using the intended father’s sperm and an egg from a donor unrelated to the process; in the third hypothesis, the embryo is created using the oocyte of the “intended” mother and the sperm of a donor unrelated to the couple. Lastly, an embryo from a couple completely unrelated to the process is used and transferred to the womb of the “gestational carrier”. In the latter case it is truly incomprehensible since there is no difference with an adoption. Having made this necessary premise, if we examine the problem rationally we will find two types of women who turn to this method”.
According to Giorlandino “the first are those who have difficulty or impossibility in carrying on a pregnancy due to medical problems or of fertility, for example for conditions that make a pregnancy dangerous or impossible or, more frequently, for having been subjected to surgical interventions that have made it impossible for them to carry on a pregnancy in the same way as those who are born without a uterus. All of these, however, as mentioned, have ovaries capable of producing fertilizable oocytes which, once fertilised, will be transferred to a recipient woman, the so-called “gestational carrier”. Obviously, in these cases, surrogacy may represent the only option for having a biological child. The latter are those who simply want to prefer to avoid the risks and disorders associated with pregnancy and childbirth, but still wish to have a child biologically related to them. Surrogacy offers them the possibility of realizing this desire without having to personally undergo a pregnancy, abhorring the complications or simple effects that this state can have on their bodies.”
“Why, therefore, the effect of a surrogate motherhood For women, is it still a “loss”, a failure, a defeat? – says Prof Claudio Giorlandino – Because a child, carried in the womb, communicates profoundly with the mother and the mother with him. With this I do not want to trivialize or condemn surrogacy but I want to forcefully state that a woman, especially when she turns to it out of simple hedonism, to safeguard her body, in the end does not gain from it, but loses from it. He loses that now perfectly known intimate relationship, which is called “limbic imprinting”. A profound and once mysterious connection that all mothers have always experienced and which they feel exists in an indissoluble and profound way. It is that process by which prenatal experiences are imprinted on the limbic system, through the mother and which the mother, for her part, lives and experiences as a primitive sense of nutrition, of care, of an indissoluble and profound bond towards her product of conception that grows and lives inside her, kicking and adapting to her biorhythms. The limbic system includes the structures of the brain that control emotions, memories, passion but also emotion, excitement, sensitivity, empathy by communicating and imposing its ancestral “point of view” on the prefrontal cortex by adapting its choices and the resulting behavior. This important phylogenetic mechanism differs between men and women. Nature made sure that women, to be mothers, used the limbic portion which evolved more recently than the male one. Everything serves to make pregnancy an experience, a process infinitely deeper, richer and incredibly more structuring the female personality than simple placental biology”.