A week after Spanish actress Ana Obregón announced that she had conceived a child through a surrogate mother in the US, she revealed that the baby's biological father is her deceased son.
"This girl is not my daughter, she is my niece," she told Hola! magazine.
Although surrogacy is illegal in Spain, adopting a child born abroad is legal. Her son died of cancer at the age of 27, and Mrs. Obregón sees the child as her mission.
"That was Aless's last wish, to bring a child of his own into the world," she said, describing a conversation a week before her son died. Before Aless's death in 2020, a sample of his sperm was frozen and stored in New York.
Surrogacy is when a woman agrees to carry and give birth to a child on someone else's behalf. Often, but not always, it is done in exchange for money.
Ethically, adoption by a grandmother can become a problem in Spain because according to the laws there, people do not have the right to adopt "an offspring". Ana Obregón made it clear that legally she is the baby's mother, even if biologically she is her grandmother.
Social philosophy expert Gonzalo Velasco said there was nothing illegal about the case, at least as far as he knew, but he believed there was an ethical issue.
"Ana Obregón has taken it upon herself to interpret the wishes of her dead son. No child is ever the property of his parents, nor is a dead child. No mother or father has the power to interpret the wishes of their child," said he.
"She bought herself a granddaughter with sperm from her dead son," said Verónica Fumanal, president of Spain's Political Communication Association. "She photographed [the baby] and sold the franchise."
Obregón has tried to defuse the debate, calling the discussions in Spain "absurd" because surrogacy is legal in many countries around the world.
