Olivia Maurel, born to a surrogate mother, is today spokesperson for the Casablanca declaration which calls for the global repeal of surrogacy (GPA). After a meeting Thursday with Pope Francis, she is due to testify at the International Conference for the Universal Abolition of Surrogacy which is being held in Rome on April 5 and 6.
For several months, Olivia Maurel, a thirty-year-old Franco-American, married and mother of three children, has taken to social networks to tell her moving story. Born through surrogacy in the United States, she had to wait until she was 30 to discover the truth about her origins, although she says she has always felt a lot of suffering and doubts within herself since her birth. . “I grew up in a normal family context, with parents who had money,” she confides in a testimony shared on social networks. “I always had this feeling that something was wrong, that there was a difference with my mother. » During her childhood, her adolescence and as a young adult, several clues made her think that she was born from a surrogacy. “On my birth certificate it says that my intended mother is my biological mother but that I was born in the United States. But there was no reason for my mother to give birth there.
Later, around age 16-17, she researched Kentucky, and more specifically Louisville County, and discovered that there were surrogacy centers. “And then everything makes sense in my head. As if it were obvious,” assures the young woman. For his 30th birthday, his mother-in-law decides to give him a DNA test. “I then see that I don’t have 1% French in my blood and my intended mother is French,” summarizes Olivia. “I was relieved of a weight. I finally had physical proof of my entire existence, of thirty years of doubt, of lies, and that did me good. I was happy. We cannot build ourselves without knowing our origins. »
Je suis Olivia, je suis née de la gestation pour autrui et pourtant je suis contre la gestation pour autrui.
— Olivia Maurel (@maurel_olivia) March 30, 2024
Je suis un paradoxe vivant et j’en suis consciente: je suis contre ce qui m’a mis au monde et à juste titre.
Je suis ici aujourd’hui pour donner une autre version de… pic.twitter.com/5FybDjAjYx
Since then, she has not hesitated to tell her painful story, hoping to mobilize the international community to definitively abolish surrogacy. “It is always complicated as a child to say that at some point we were the subject of a contract, we were a thing, we were sold,” she testifies with emotion. “I was an object bought and sold. » And Olivia continues: “When we also know that 50% of us is somewhere in the world and we don’t know what this 50% is… It’s very difficult. The most traumatic thing about surrogacy is the separation from the mother who carries the child for nine months and who has to give her up. »
In conjunction with his personal approach, around a hundred experts and researchers from around the world gathered in March 2023, in Morocco, to sign an international declaration for the universal abolition of GPA, asking States to commit to the fight against surrogacy, in particular by proposing a draft international convention on the subject . Olivia Maurel is today the spokesperson for this Casablanca declaration and meets all the signatories on April 5 and 6 in Rome this time, gathered for the International Conference of the Casablanca Declaration for the Abolition of Motherhood substitution. The objective of this new meeting is to inform public decision-makers about the harmful effects of surrogacy and to provide a legal toolbox to States wishing to defend their populations against this market, with the ultimate idea of lead to the adoption of an international treaty.
It is in this news that she was received by Pope Francis this Thursday, April 4 with a delegation from the Casablanca Declaration including her husband, Bernard Garcia Larrain, Sofia Maruri, lawyer and professor at the University of Montevideo and Adriano Borgnignon, from Foro delle Famiglie. “It was an extraordinary meeting. He recalled on several occasions that surrogacy was a market and that he supported us in our approach to its universal abolition. We could see that the subject was close to his heart,” she confided to the I.Media agency after her meeting with François. “He also highlighted something that struck me coming from a head of state like him: when a woman is pregnant with a child, the child gives cells to the mother, who keeps traces of this child in his body for a long time – almost 30 years in fact. He wanted to recall this scientific link between woman and child. »
As a reminder in January 2024 , the Pope himself called for a universal ban on the “despicable” and “inhumane” practice of surrogacy, which “represents a serious violation of the dignity of women and children” , urging the international community to ban this practice universally. In Italy, a law criminalizing the use of surrogacy, including outside Italian territory, is currently being adopted and could play a role on the international stage in view of an international convention for the ban global surrogacy. The dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is also preparing to publish on April 8 Dignitas Inifinitas , a new declaration devoted to the theme of human dignity.
The Casablanca Declaration
Signed in Morocco on March 3, 2023 by 100 interdisciplinary experts – lawyers, doctors, academics, feminist activists, etc. – from 75 different nationalities, the Casablanca declaration is a call launched to States for a universal abolition of GPA. This apolitical and non-confessional group calls for the refusal of any legal value to surrogacy contracts, sanctions against natural or legal persons who offer themselves as intermediaries between surrogate mothers and sponsors, sanctions against sponsors, whether within or in outside the national territory, and the creation of an international legal instrument to enforce abolition. Finally, with a view to these objectives, he calls for the launch of an international convention on this theme.
