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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS