Brazilian regulation on surrogacy

Abstract

Surrogacy is a type of assisted reproduction technique that assists reproductively challenged people into building their families. In surrogacy, a woman – called “surrogate” – carries the baby of the “intended parents”, a term that includes same-sex couples, heterosexual couples and single people in a parental journey. Brazil is considered a country with a regulatory model - instead of a prohibitive country or a no-regulation country – but with a particularity: there’s no specific law. The legal regulation is in the form of a resolution presented by the Federal Medical Council of Brazil, which means it is not legally binding, only ethically binding for doctors. The first resolution was published in 1992 and the current one is Resolution n. 2.168 of 2017. Some bills have been proposed since 1997 – usually just reproducing exactly what the resolution from the Federal Medical Council says – but none of them were approved. This way, Resolution n. 2.168/2017 is still, at the present moment, the only regulatory document about surrogacy in Brazil.