Surrogacy & human trafficking: interbranch conflict

Introduction: the article discusses the challenging problem of the interbranch conflict between the legal institution of surrogacy and a criminally punishable act - human trafficking. The normative minimalism of regulatory legislation, the lack of understanding of the essence of surrogacy as a legal institution, insufficient understanding of the legal essence of the contract for child bearing and birth, are the factors that necessitate defining the boundaries of what is permissible through drawing a distinction between the application of surrogacy technology and the crime mentioned. Resolution of this issue is of particular importance for ensuring legal certainty that would exclude both abusive practices in legal relations involving surrogate motherhood and unlawful prosecution against the participants in these relations. Purpose: to create a conceptual framework for the interbranch relationship between the institution of surrogacy and the criminal law prohibition of human trafficking. Methods: empirical methods of comparison, description, interpretation; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic; special scientific methods: legal-dogmatic and the method of interpretation of legal norms. Results: the research into interbranch interaction of the institutions in question showed that the root cause of contradictions in the practice of applying the norms under study is the lack of a uniform systemic approach, both at the international and domestic level, to determining the legal boundaries of surrogacy technology and to the protection of relations generated by this technology by the norms on human trafficking. Conclusions: we have formulated doctrinal definitions of the institution of surrogate motherhood and the contract for child bearing and birth, which is interpreted as an interbranch contract; identified the legal nature of the surrogate mother’s consent to record the potential (genetic) parents in relation to the child born by her; described the specific nature of contractual structures included in the subject area of surrogate motherhood, with the identification of defects that transfer private-law relations regulated by them into the field of criminal law; formulated recommendations on the application of Article 127.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. At present, there are no means in international law to resolve the conflict between legal surrogacy and human trafficking; the transnational nature of the phenomena under study dictates the need for the development of such means.