Who's your mommy: A study on the maternity of a child borne through gestational surrogacy

In the past few years the practice of gestational surrogacy in the Philippines has gained notoriety as a method for couples for acquiring children. A gestational surrogate mother is a woman that agrees to bear the genetic child of another. The influx of surrogacy has raised a new urgency, a new class of concerns regarding the proper delegation of a surrogate child's legal custody, because the Family Code of the Philippines provides that the basis of motherhood is birth and identity. Literatures have argued that the birth mother is the mother, because of the materiality of the actual act of birth and its emotional bearing. On the other hand, sources firmly establish that genetics is the prevailing distinction, due to the fact that it is coupled with a valid contract that expresses the sole intention of entering a surrogacy contract.This study provides a theory and framework on whom as between the birth mother and the genetic mother has a right over the custody of a child borne out of surrogacy in the Philippines.