With the draft law banning surrogacy only a step away from review and passage by the legislature, proponents of surrogate motherhood have vowed to reverse the odds by seeking lawmakers' sympathy for infertile mothers.
After years of debate, the Executive Yuan approved Wednesday the draft of the Artificial Insemination Law (
In the wake of the ban, proponents of the legalization of surrogacy blasted health authorities for being "unsympathetic" to the plight of infertile couples and insisted they will seek to reverse the ban during the legislative proceedings.
Chen Chao-tzu (陳昭姿), director of the pharmacy department at the Sun Yat-sen Cancer Center, the most outspoken proponent of the legalization of surrogacy, said yesterday that she is determined to fight the ban and that she has gained support from many lawmakers.
"Those who oppose surrogacy simply think of things from too surreal a point of view. Have any of them really felt the desperate feelings of infertile mothers?" Chen asked. "Being infertile myself, I know very well these mothers' desire to have their own children. I've also received hundreds of letters from infertile couples, who told me how much they hoped for legalization of surrogacy in Taiwan," she said.
"We're indeed disappointed by the Executive Yuan's decision to ban surrogacy, but it's not over yet. Lots of lawmakers do support legalization of it and I expect they will help to reverse the whole situation in the future," Chen said.
Chen, who is infertile due to a congenitally underdeveloped uterus, has long pushed for legalization of surrogate motherhood and scored an important victory when the Department of Health relaxed its stance in 1997 to include surrogacy as one of many artificial technologies to help infertile couples.
The health department eventually decided to outlaw surrogacy in its finalized draft of the Artificial Insemination Law for legal and moral reasons, however. Difficulties in defining parental relationships are one of the reasons the department has cited.
Among other reasons, "commercialization" has been at the center of the debate about surrogate motherhood. A majority of women activists here oppose legalization of surrogacy on the ground that it amounts to commercial exploitation of women.
"It's a sale of a woman's womb and a sale of her child. I think few women would volunteer to be surrogate mothers and in the end it's women who need money who will go for the deal," said Chang Chueh, a professor from the women's studies program at National Taiwan University.
Chang said that -- as many other countries have found -- problems have arisen from surrogacy, such as disputes over birth mothers' rights, or risks to the surrogate mothers' health. And what if the child to which the surrogate mother gives birth is physically or mentally handicapped, Chang added.
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