The company Tammuz, which was founded about a decade ago in Israel, now wants to branch into Portugal with an office in Lisbon, joining other companies available in this country albeit until now exclusively online.
In comments to Lusa News Agency, Tammuz CEO Roy Nir guaranteed the company’s operations in Portugal would be completely legal as any processes would be carried out outside of Portugal.
He said the Portuguese office would just be somewhere “to receive, with great pleasure, anyone interested in doing the process outside of Portugal.
“We are not going to do anything in Portugal, because Portuguese legislation does not even allow the option of the agencies”, said Roy Nir, explaining the physical space that will open in Lisbon will simply serve to make people feel safer and more confident when embarking on a process that “has a lot of money and emotion involved”.
In Portugal, surrogacies are prohibited. Until recently only women who could not have children, due to a lack of uterus, were allowed to resort to a surrogate, but without any money changing hands.
On April 24, that law was considered unconstitutional.
Through Tammuz, all women who accept to be surrogates
are paid and anyone, regardless of their state of health, can acquire their services.
The ideology of the company is simple: “Everyone has the right to have a family”, from heterosexual or homosexual couples, women or men alone, the administrator says, adding: “We have helped create more than 750 families” [in a decade].
It is in Ukraine and the US that the vast majority of the babies are born.
According to Roy Nir, Ukrainians receive between €20,000 and 22,000 euros, and American surrogates about 50,000 dollars, or €42,000.
A choice of country is offered due to local legislation: in Ukraine, only married heterosexual couples can resort to surrogacy and if “the woman has a medical condition that means she cannot conceive.”
In the US the scenario is different; “there is no discrimination”, and it is in the US that homosexual couples can fulfil their dreams of parenthood, although at almost double the cost of what heterosexual couples might pay.
Roy Nir recalls that a surrogacy is a very complex process, since it takes an egg donor and another woman available for pregnancy, clinical services, doctors and legal services.
But the administrator ensures that the company deals with everything from the first contact of clients, until the day they take their newborn home.