Georgia’s surrogacy laws need “improvement”

Georgia’s ex-Prime Minister is the latest official to speak up in response to the controversial speech made by Georgia’s Patriarch in his Christmas Epistle.

Bidzina Ivanishvili said surrogacy continued to be an issue that was passionately debated and expressed his positive opinion of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization (IVF) at a press conference dedicated to explaining his new non-Governmental organization (NGO) Citizen.

The ex-Prime Minister comments were in response to the Christmas Epistle of the Patriarch of Georgia Ilia II, which focused on issues of abortion, artificial in vitro insemination and surrogacy.

In the speech, Ilia II said: "How can a family, where a child born and raised by a surrogate mother, be happy? This little child is doomed to be deprived of love and is doomed to loneliness from the very beginning.”

Ivanishvili strongly contested this and said: "When a couple, husband and wife cannot have a child and medicine intervenes and new life is born, there is nothing to argue.”

"The issues surrounding surrogacy are a little bit controversial. The law about this needs some improvement and it causes many problems in the world,” Ivanishvili explained.

Ivanishvili supported artificial in vitro insemination.

"When I lived in France, I gave financial aid to friends of mine who had fertility problems. Now they have a lovely child and are very happy. I am proud to help them,” he stated.

Ivanishvili respected the opinion of the Patriarch of Georgia but politely disagreed.

"The Patriarch can express his opinion, it is his attitude. I respect his view and we are allowed to disagree. It is normal,” Ivanishvili said.