Assisted filiation, new concept in the New Families Code.
According to the expert, this concept emerges as a result of the transformations in the Cuban society and tries not to “leave anyone out”.
She commented that the regulations on maternity and paternity has gone through transformations:“at such a point that the project does not talk about paternal filial relations anymore as the current Code does; but speaks about parental relations”.
Likewise, she explained that there have been to types of filiations, one is from the biological and blood links and the other is the adoptive filiation.
She said that “ the transformations including the low birth rate levels has made specialists use assisted reproduction techniques to achieve the craving for motherhood or fatherhood”.
The specialist added that in this case it does not mean that there is a vulnerable child but (when adoption), but is about people who cannot have their own family in a natural way.
Assisted filiation as she said, “an external technique is required where there is no sexual link. The legal protecction is a novelty in this case, the technique was used, in heterosexual, homoaffective and reconstructed families or people being alone. Techniques do not distinguish to whom they will be for”
Dr. Miladys Orraca Castillo, president of the Sociedad Científica Cubana para el Desarrollo de la Familia (SOCUDEF) reiterated that assisted filiation is based on assisted production techniques.
In respect to the origin of this practice in our country she recalled: “ they started to be done in Cuba since 1986 when the first conceptionwas completed in this way. At the late eighties a consultation for the people with reproduction dificulties was developed and equipment was given for that purpose. The first pregnacy, using this technique, was achieved in 1992 and in 2006 a high level technology center was opened to have pregnancies through in vitro fertilization”.
Nowadays there are four centers like this in the country. There is a network of appointments at the e primary health system in each municipality, and provincial assisted reproduction centers and centers with higher technology in the nation.
“This are very expensive techniques for the country, in spite of that they are offered totally free of charge to the families. The
The medical supplies, reagents and medicines used to achieve a pregnancy are the same as those used in the first world and here they are free of charge".
In another part of his speech he referred to the benefits offered by the new legal norm. In this sense, he affirmed that the subject that will be favored (up to now it referred to those who had infertility), establishes a legal basis that goes beyond adoption and biological ties, and new practices will be developed for Cuba.
On her part, the director of the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex), Mariela Castro Espín emphasized: "This is one of the many acts of justice achieved with this proposal of the new Family Code".
"Just as heterosexual couples yearn in many occasions for motherhood and fatherhood, so do same-gender couples. The different sexual orientations do not mean that these vocations and life projects in which these are expressed do not exist", he argued.
Castro Espín said that the population in the process of popular "is learning to value these things, appreciate them and put it in its proper measure."
"There are those who say the population is aging and these services are going to help bring about higher fertility. It's not really done for that. It's done to satisfy the intense and deep desire that the family has to expand with reproduction," he said.
He warned about the need not to get carried away by prejudices. "When analyzing on the basis of rights, we cannot let prejudices get through. It is not fair at all. We have to learn to put ourselves in the place of another person who needs their rights to be equally recognized."
The Cinesex director explained that families are evolving, "they are cohabitation agreements, and they do not necessarily have to be based on biological ties. Motherhood and fatherhood is not a gift of nature. We learn to build the bond, we generate a culture of how to take care of the different stages of upbringing".
"If only," she added, "we could create spaces for family schools everywhere so that all the people who want to take on this responsibility feel professionally advised. These are immense and complex responsibilities and all the people who assume this role need counseling."
Castro Espín reiterated that the law is protecting what has been unprotected and neglected. "That has an incalculable value."
"Why are we so selfish? Why don't we want to understand that we all have the right to happiness and to have the same opportunities in life? Family life is the most important space of every human being and we have to take care of it and protect it through this law without excluding anyone."
In another moment of the space, the full professor of the Faculty of Law of the UH, Ana María Álvarez-Tabío Albo emphasized that the techniques of assisted human reproduction, which have already existed in the world for a long time, did not have a legal support for a recognition beyond the Infertile Couple Program.
"It is now about recognizing the rights that we all voted for in 2019 in our Constitution, of equality and non-discrimination. It is discriminatory to prevent a person from accessing parenthood because of their infertility, natural impossibility to have one and because of their sexual orientation. This is unthinkable in the light of our Constitution".
Álvarez-Tabío Albo pointed out that the law cannot go miles away from the reality it is called to protect. "What we are trying to do with this project is to bring it a little bit closer to that reality."
"There are those who say the population is aging and these services are going to help with higher fertility. That's not really why it's being done. It is done to satisfy the intense and deep desire that the family has to expand with reproduction," he said.
He warned about the need not to get carried away by prejudices. "When analyzing on the basis of rights, we cannot let prejudices get through. It is not fair at all. We have to learn to put ourselves in the place of another person who needs their rights to be equally recognized."
The Cinesex director explained that families are evolving, "they are cohabitation agreements, which do not necessarily have to be based on biological ties. Motherhood and fatherhood is not a gift of nature. We learn to build the bond; we generate a culture of how to take care of the different stages of upbringing".
"If only," she added, "we could create spaces for family schools everywhere so that all the people who want to take on this responsibility feel professionally advised. These are immense and complex responsibilities and all the people who assume this role need counseling."
Castro Espín reiterated that the law is protecting what has been unprotected and neglected. "That has an incalculable value."
"Why are we so selfish? Why don't we want to understand that we all have the right to happiness and to have the same opportunities in life? Family life is the most important space of every human being and we have to take care of it and protect it through this law without excluding anyone."
In another moment of the space, the full professor of the Faculty of Law of the UH, Ana María Álvarez-Tabío Albo emphasized that the techniques of assisted human reproduction, which have already existed in the world for a long time, did not have a legal support for a recognition beyond the Infertile Couple Program.
"It is now about recognizing the rights that we all voted for in 2019 in our Constitution, of equality and non-discrimination. It is discriminatory to prevent a person from accessing parenthood because of their infertility, natural impossibility to have one and because of their sexual orientation. This is unthinkable in the light of our Constitution".
Álvarez-Tabío Albo pointed out that the law cannot go miles away from the reality it is called to protect. "What we are trying to do with this project is to bring it a little bit closer to that reality."
"It is in the State's interest that this happens in protected spaces, where people are guaranteed the right to their health and care," he warned about situations that sometimes occur in order to achieve maternity or paternity.
"Solidarity gestation is not surrogacy or surrogate motherhood. It is the gestation that a woman is going to carry out altruistically for a member of her family or for the benefit of an affectionately close person," he clarified.
He ratified that this is the Code of affection, freedom and solidarity. "Gestation can only be allowed in that context with solidary eagerness. It is that sister who can carry forward the pregnancy of her sister who is unable to do , it is that mother who can do it for her daughter."
The professor pointed out that this is not a situation reserved for homoaffective couples. "It is also for people of the so-called traditional diversities".
"We are talking -she reiterated- about a gestation by solidarity and altruism. Far from any commercialization of the woman's body and from turning the result of this conception into the object of a contract".
To this end, this process will go through three essential controls. "First, legal control, second, a sanitary control that will be very rigorous; and third, it will undergo judicial scrutiny. The court is going to verify that all the legal, medical and regulatory requirements are met in order to then grant a judicial authorization," he explained.
"Whoever dares to do a solidary gestation without legal authorization will have to go through the rules of natural filiation. And that gestating woman who had no interest in becoming a mother, is going to have to assume the role of mother."
She assured that "we have tried to shield the process in such a way that there is no escape to any remuneration from the normal requirements of carrying out a pregnancy. There is no possibility of a woman's body becoming an object of commercialization".
Miladys Orraca Castillo, president of the Cuban Scientific Society for the Development of the Family (SOCUDEF), spoke at another moment of the Round Table about the sanitary control that will have the solidarity gestation, Miladys Orraca Castillo, president of the Cuban Scientific Society for the Development of the Family (SOCUDEF).
"Not all countries use this medical practice and there are some that do it on the basis of commercialization, not as proposed in the draft of the Family Code," she said.
The doctor pointed out that solidarity gestation imposes a challenge to the health system, since the concepts are changed. "What used to be the Infertile Couple Care Program is re-emerging as a new care program for people who require assisted reproduction techniques to be able to develop maternity or paternity."
"First," he explained, "it is necessary to elaborate norms and provisions and protocols of action that allow us to take on this group of people.
Orraca Castillo commented on her years of experience in consulting couples who were unable to have children and how "mothers, sisters and friends offered themselves to gestation".
"With this project, this is one of the newest medical practices for which we health professionals have to prepare ourselves," she said.
In a final moment, Castro Espín recalled that the Family Code currently in force in Cuba has had a very long journey that has received modifications on three occasions.
"In the Cuban Revolution there is an important history of family law, of learning and practices at the legislative level. The current Code was the result of a process of popular consultation, in which its initial proposals were very revolutionary and the result was what our population was able to understand at that time in the field of family law".
The director of Cenesex reiterated that the Constitution, in which a broad debate also took place, gave the protection to be able to advance in the updating of our legislative system.
She pointed out that it is also about "those cultural changes that are generated, values that are instituted and principles that guide all the transformations within Cuban society".
Castro Espín said that the popular consultation process is an essential exercise of democracy, where "concerns, prejudices and ignorance that are being clarified" are coming out all the time.
"No one has been excluded. Everyone is participating. Whoever is not doing it is because they don't want to. They have the right and the possibility to do so.
He reiterated that rights must be guaranteed "above all the points of view that are put on the table. Rights are rights. And the Constitution establishes it. The laws have to be in correspondence with it," he concluded.
On the subject, Ana María Álvarez-Tabío Albo, full professor of the UH Law School, stressed the importance that all the people see it from the vision of rights.
Álvarez-Tabío Albo pointed out that this right is enshrined not only in the Constitution, but also in the Declaration of Universal Rights. He insisted that "it is the right we all have to found a family. The possibility of doing so by assisted means is one more part of the exercise of the protection of this right"
Related information
National Fertility Survey in Cuba will start in April .
Discharge apk of the Project of the families Code
https://www.apklis.cu/application/com.anteproyectocodigofamilia