Spain TV star says child born to surrogacy in US is late son’s daughter

Madrid, Apr 5 (EFE).- A Spanish actress whose decision to adopt a baby using a surrogate mother in the United States stirred a political and public debate has confirmed that the child is the biological daughter of her late son.

Ana Obregón, 68, told this week’s edition of the celebrity news magazine ¡Hola! that one of the wishes of her son Alejandro ‘Aless’ Lequio, who died of cancer in 2020, was to bring a child of his “into the world.”

“This child is not my daughter, but rather my granddaughter,” Obregón, who starred in TV shows and movies in the 1980s and 90s, told ¡Hola! in an exclusive interview in Miami just over two weeks after she was photographed by the magazine emerging from the city’s Memorial Regional Hospital in a wheelchair while cradling the newborn, who has since been named Ana Sandra Lequio Obregón.

“She is the daughter of Aless and when she grows up I will tell her how her father was a hero, so she knows who he is and how proud she should be of him.

“The decision to begin the process of a surrogate pregnancy, which involves, as you know, the participation of an egg donor and a surrogate, started the day my son went to heaven,” she added.

“When they diagnosed my son with cancer and he was about to start chemotherapy, the doctors recommended we save some of his sperm, in case the medication affected it in the future,” the Spanish celebrity said.

“These samples were preserved in New York. That day in the hospital, Aless was already very ill and he told us that if something should happen to him, that we should know that he wanted to leave descendants, even if he was no longer here.

“From that moment, the only thing that has kept me going each day, each second, is to accomplish this mission to bring a child of Aless into the world,” Obregón told ¡Hola!.

Obregón’s case has stirred a widespread debate in Spain, where the practice of surrogate pregnancy is illegal unlike in some parts of the United States.

“There is a clear discrimination bias due to poverty,” Irene Montero, Spain’s equality minister and a member of the left-wing Unidas Podemos party, said in March in reference to paid surrogacies.

Socialist Party education minister Pilar Alegría said the practice “exploited” women and was damaging to the interests of children.

The centrist Ciudadnos party, which has waning clout in Spain, called for a debate on legalizing so-called altruistic surrogacies, where no money is exchanged. EFE

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