Surrogacy for single men: the EU's legal grey area

Surrogacy for single men: the right the EU ignores

A single man with no partner who wants to become a father hits a legal wall in Spain. He cannot commission a surrogate pregnancy; adopting alone means years of paperwork; and if he manages to have a child abroad, consular registration becomes another ordeal. The conversation about this regulatory gap has brought to light figures and contradictions that are hard to defend.

The asymmetry with single women is the first sticking point. While they can easily access sperm banks and fertility treatments funded by the public health system, single men have almost every route closed off. The most repeated argument against equal treatment is the supposed protection of the child; against this, it is pointed out that rates of child abuse or infanticide are not correlated with the parent's gender, and that preventing fatherhood protects no one, it only punishes.

Prices draw the real map of surrogacy for men. Albania appears as the only European country where they can commission it, with costs of between €70,000 and €90,000 through Spanish agencies. Mexico and the United States are alternatives, although in the US costs exceed €100,000. Before the war, Ukraine was the usual destination with rates of around €50,000, trinc by Georgia with similar prices. Some point out that cheap packages end up costing double if there are miscarriages, while premium ones guarantee the child, come what may.

The institutional hurdle is perhaps the least visible and the most decisive. To force regulatory change at European scale, signatures are needed in seven different countries, and the machinery to gather them requires funding and platforms that are not within everyone's reach. The complaint about the lack of mobilisation mixes with a specific fact: Spain would be the only country in the world that does not register at its embassies the children of single fathers born through surrogacy, which forces judicial processes of two or three years and entering through the immigrant route.

The result is a de facto reproductive migration. Those who can afford €80,000 or €100,000 travel to Albania or Mexico; those who cannot are left out. Meanwhile, other assisted reproduction routes do receive public funding, exposing a hierarchy of rights that no one has fully explained. The unsettling fact is this: there is no objective reason for marital status and gender to determine access to fatherhood so starkly. And yet, that is exactly what happens.