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LISBON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Wednesday vetoed a bill to allow surrogacy for couples unable to conceive.
The legislation, which was adopted by the Portuguese parliament in May and sent to the president on Tuesday, "does not conform to the conditions formulated by the National Council of Ethics and Life Sciences," Rebelo de Sousa said.
The decree regarding the right to surrogate births, proposed by the Left Bloc, intended to give women the right to carry someone else's baby and then hand it over to another person after the birth, free of charge, in cases in which couple's were unable to conceive, for example due to an absence of the womb.
This bill was approved in a plenary vote on May 13 with votes in favor by the Socialist Party, Left Bloc, Green Party and PAN, and 24 Social Democrat deputies including former prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho. Three Social Democrats abstained and the majority of the other parties voted against, including the Communist Party, CDS-PP and two Socialist MPs.
In some countries like England or Denmark, surrogacy -- dubbed "wombs for rent" -- is legal. But the subject is controversial due to cases in which babies have been abandoned. Enditem
