When the Department of Health (DOH) announced last month that a citizen panel will be formed on a "Western model" to solicit public opinions on surrogate motherhood, few expected the panel to reach a consensus on the controversy.
"The procedures of the meeting are questionable," said Josephine Ho (
The question of whether and how to legalize surrogate motherhood has sparked contention since the Guidelines for the Ethics of Human Procreation and Reproductive Technologies (人工生殖技術倫理指導綱領) were announced in 1986 and the Regulations of Human Reproductive Technologies (人工生殖技術管理辦法) took effect in 1994.
"The discussion is replete with polarized opinions of different groups. Childless couples, doctors, lawyers, feminists, social activists, officials all have their own take on the issue," said Lin Shio-jean (
Among three different drafts to revise the reproduction law, only one version, proposed by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lai Ching-te (賴清德), includes articles to define and regulate surrogate motherhood. The other two suggested revisions, under review in the DOH and Legislative Yuan respectively, drop this thorny issue.
"Because we still need more debates and to get more people to understand the pros and cons of this matter, we cannot rashly put it in our draft," Lin said.
To seek public views before a legal decision, the DOH arranged a citizen panel and declared that this panel's conclusion, although not legally binding, will offer important guidance for the policy-making body. Lin Kuo-ming (林國明), an National Taiwan University sociology associate professor who helped organize the forum, said that preparatory meetings will be held on Aug. 28 and Aug. 29 and the formal meetings will be held from Sept. 11 to Sept. 18.
Many sources questioned the legitimacy and impartiality of the meeting. With its 12 to 20 members randomly chosen or recommended by borough heads, the forum can hardly represent 23 million people's opinions.
While coordinator Lin Kuo-ming said that the panel will seek participants without fixed stances on the issue in order to ensure an "objective" approach, Ho said that such presumptions were naive and unpractical.
"How can anyone not have a subjective view? Even if one doesn't endorse or oppose surrogate motherhood, he or she will still see this specific issue from the looking-glass of gender equality, family normalcy, parent-child relationships, individual autonomy and a number of others," Ho said.
Others doubted the small group's capability to look into the question from a broad and diverse perspective. "How are they going to gauge the merits of legalizing surrogate motherhood? From a sterile mother's perspective? A surrogate mother's perspective? Or the child's perspective?" asked Wang Yu-ming (王育敏), the chief executive of the Child Welfare League Foundation.
"The meeting is a facade of democracy. The logic behind the citizen panel is that the minority must be subject to the majority's decision. Yet this ignores the fact that a majority's decision sometimes fails to protect the rights of the minority," Ho said.
"Maybe a comprehensive survey or opinion poll can reflect changing social attitudes more than the citizen panel," Wang said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS