RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Portugal opened the door to “post-mortem” insemination after the Parliament’s approval of a bill that must now be sanctioned by the President, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
The law, if sanctioned, will allow a woman to be inseminated with the genetic material of her deceased partner, provided it is performed within six months to three years after death, with prior consent given during life, and it is proven that paternity was an already established objective.
No limit will be placed on the number of insemination attempts, which may be carried out until the woman becomes pregnant.
The baby will be the deceased’s posthumous child unless the mother has been matched during the process and the new partner is registered as the father.
Failure to comply with these requirements can lead to a prison sentence of up to two years.
The Socialists supported the initiative – with a free vote that resulted in five abstentions -the Left Bloc, the Communist Party, the Animalists, the Ecologists, and the Liberals. The right-wing Chega, the Popular Party, and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) voted against.
The debate on post-mortem reproduction in Portugal has been marked by reservations from medical organizations such as the National Ethics Council for Life Sciences (CNEVC), the National Council for Medically Assisted Procreation (CNPMA), and the Portuguese Fertility Association.
Rita Lobo Xavier, president of CNEVC, considered that the mother’s decision may be affected by pathological bereavement and underlined the real impossibility of contrasting the deceased donor’s real will.
Reservations shared by the CNPMA, which sent a document to the Assembly with some considerations, such as the fact that no differentiation is made between sperm or embryo insemination, the lack of requirements for the donor’s authorization, or the absence of limits for the number of insemination attempts.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office, for its part, requested clarification on the registration of the baby if the pregnant woman marries during the process.
The law must now be analyzed by the President of the Republic, who may send the text to the Constitutional Court before vetoing or sanctioning it. In the latter case, the law becomes effective the day after its publication in the Diário da República.
Its ratification would make Portugal one of the few European countries to allow this technique, which is prohibited in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and France but legal in England, the Netherlands, and Greece.
Source: infobae