This text is part of the special Feminine Leadership notebook
Isabel Côté has been working for more than 20 years to recognize exceptional families so that they have the same rights as everyone else. His contribution notably made it possible to help implement family law reforms. Since then, she has continued to work to ensure that women’s voices are heard, particularly those of women who choose to embark on the long process of surrogacy and medically assisted procreation. Portrait of a leader.
Recently appointed to the Central Committee for Clinical Ethics in Medically Assisted Reproduction (PMA) of the Ministry of Health and Social Services of Quebec, Isabel Côté is primarily a professor of social work and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Reproduction for others and family ties. Her work and research led her to become interested in different family portraits. “I first looked at lesbian couples who decided to include a person outside the marital unit to have a child and how these people were then involved or not with the child. Then, I did research on homosexual fathers using a surrogate mother and how these children represent their family models,” she explains. Mme Côté then broadened his research to heteroparental and single-parent families.
Reforms of the right to social acceptance
Isabel Côté was part of all the debates. During consultations for family law reforms in 2021, she was invited to present a brief concerning bills 2 and 12, which aimed in particular to recognize a right to origins for children born through gamete donation as well as the supervision of parental projects involving a pregnancy for others. Shortly after, a committee to advise professionals who work in assisted procreation centers on ethical issues related to clinical activities was set up.
“What interests me are the recognitions of family systems in society. The law is a vector of important social norms. If the law recognizes your family, it is as if it had the right to exist, she emphasizes. Social recognition is therefore essential to achieve more equality between different family models, she adds. However, in reality, families have always preceded the law, they existed before the law integrated and legitimized them. Children were born before marriage. Long before the law accepted it, children born from assisted reproduction were born in the 1980s, children with two mothers or two fathers already existed before being recognized by family law,” she points out.
Isabel Côté defines herself as a feminist. Her work on management for others (GPA) led her to notice often divisive discourses on the journey of these women who choose to carry a child for someone else. “We often talk about them, but not really to them. In my research, the objective is really to talk to them, to start from their own point of view and to build knowledge with them,” she explains. According to the researcher, debates in feminist circles regarding surrogacy often revolve around the same questions: are these women subservient to the desire of a couple in need of children, are they subservient to the male desire to have a child when it comes to a gay couple? “We don’t hear about their agency, the reason that guides them to become surrogate mothers. They are not necessarily candid and naive women; on the contrary, they have their own opinion and motives,” she says.
A voice of leader
“It is women and their bodies who must undergo treatments in the process of assisted reproduction, whether they are egg donors or surrogate mothers. The treatments can be invasive and there are a lot of issues,” she explains. Its objective is therefore to promote their voices when ethics discussions take place within public bodies, in particular. “However, we should not describe GPA as a paradise where everything is beautiful. It’s not all black and white, but these women have things to share,” she believes.
If it is important to raise the voice of women experiencing GPA and PMA, it is also essential for Isabel Côté to guarantee that the rights of the children who result are respected. Hence, according to her, the importance of recognizing this family model. All the legislative tools made available to these families make it possible to better protect them, women as well as parents and children.
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