• Events Three arrested in a hospital in Badajoz for trying to sell a newborn baby

The 28-year-old surrogate mother was made to travel to Don Benito from Romania, her homeland. Like the couple themselves, also Romanian, but resident in this town of Badajoz, where they devised a calculated plan to – through a surrogate womb – stay in property with the newborn child. The admission of the surrogate mother was going to follow the regulatory channels in the hospital itself, where the delivery took place last morning. The alleged father, 42, who wandered the corridors, like any other in his situation if the frustrated outcome had not been known, moved to the health center, while his real wife, 43, waited excitedly at the couple's home. The deal had been agreed three months earlier in Romania. But everything was collapsing little by little.

The practice of surrogacy is prohibited in our country by Law 14/2006, which means that Spaniards who want to access it – called intended parents – are forced to travel abroad. The case here is carried out, instead, by a Romanian couple. She had been trying to have children without success for years, as evidenced by the health card of the non-pregnant woman, and that was the one that the pregnant woman presented on her admission. Not yours. The three would end up detained after the birth and the farce was discovered. Today they will be brought to justice.

At first, everything seemed to go perfectly: the pregnant woman's paid trip to Don Benito, plus a sum for the rental of her womb of 2,000 euros; the labor pains that make her enter the Don Benito-Villanueva hospital, and the father accompanying her. But everything fell apart in an early morning that would end up becoming eternal, with the surrogate mother in the delivery room under police custody. And marriage, in the police station.

The man was arrested in the hospital itself while his wife was arrested in the house where instead of their baby police officers appeared. A sad story.

Nothing began to fall into place during the night, which led the hospital staff to decide to raise the alarm to the police. The first thing that the young woman presented, with severe labor pains, to formalize her admission was a health card, with a name in Romanian, which would later turn out that it was not hers but of the woman who was waiting at home for the arrival of the baby. This card included the medical history that also reflected an obvious age difference -15 years-. It was the first suspicion although it was a visual interpretation. Because what was really decisive is that the card reflected that the patient had undergone an appendicitis operation. And in the body of the woman who was in delivery there was no sign of it. Not a scar, not a sequelae. Nothing. Then, as EL MUNDO has been able to verify from police sources, who really had it, of course, was the other woman. But that was discovered a few hours later.

Symptoms of nervousness

Before, the father, or supposed father, began to respond incongruously with visible symptoms of nervousness both to the first questions of the doctors and, later, of the Police. He did not clarify in a coherent way why his alleged wife had not presented original documents at her admission, only a photocopy of the health card. And the information that reflected it, such as the appendicitis operation, did not match his physical examination.

The plot was being discovered. Also on the card appeared another conclusive fact: it reflected that he had undergone several attempts, unsuccessful, of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Everything was beginning to fit into place in the investigation. Finally, he himself acknowledged to the agents that they had paid the amount of 2,000 euros in Romania to buy the newborn, admitting that the woman admitted was not his wife. At least, in this story, both the baby, a boy, and his mother are in good condition. Now, it is waiting for the decision of the Court number 1 of Don Benito that takes the case so that the authorities decide who should take care of the newborn.

It so happens that last week the Police arrested four people at the Virgen del Rocío Maternal and Child Hospital in Seville for their alleged participation in the sale of a newborn. They were also accused of the crimes of illegal trafficking for the purchase of the baby and document falsification. The plan was similar in both cases. On that occasion, two couples who planned the delivery of the baby of one of the two women who gave birth to a couple who could not have children in exchange for a "high" economic consideration, an amount that in this case did not detail the Police.

The matter was treated by health workers as a "poorly controlled pregnancy", since there was no follow-up or previous tests.

Similarly, in the case of Extremadura, the woman's medical history included records of having requested in vitro fertilization treatment when she could not have children, facts that were relevant to assume that she was posing as someone else. After the facts, the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office of Seville decreed that the newborn be delivered to the Association for the Protection of Minors of the Junta de Andalucía.

Despite the debate established in Spanish society in recent years by the proposals to regulate surrogacy, article 10 of the law of 14/2006 on assisted reproduction techniques is still in force and specifies that "the contract by which the pregnancy is agreed, with or without price, will be null and void. by a woman who renounces maternal filiation in favour of the contracting party or a third party'.

And he adds: "The filiation of children born by surrogacy will be determined by childbirth. The possible action of claim of paternity with respect to the biological father is safe, in accordance with the general rules.

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