A woman in Kaohsiung this month lost a lawsuit in which she was seeking to become the mother of twin girls born to a surrogate in Ukraine.
Despite the woman, surnamed Yeh (葉), presenting evidence that she paid NT$4.47 million (US$150,810), including fees for the surrogate mother, surrogacy agency, government registration and travel to Ukraine, the Kaohsiung District Court ruled that she had contravened Taiwan’s law that prohibits the “sale of human reproductive eggs.”
At the hearing, Yeh said that while she was not married, she wanted to raise children and had decided to emulate her friend, who had a baby born by a surrogate mother in Ukraine, where surrogacy is legal.
Yeh’s brother had agreed to be the sperm donor and to travel with his wife to Ukraine. Yeh had her brother signed an agreement that, after her brother returned to Taiwan with the baby, Yeh would register to adopt the child and become the legal mother of the infant, court documents showed.
After cultivating an embryo and assessing its healthy growth in a reproductive clinic, it was artificially inseminated in the Ukrainian surrogate mother, resulting in the birth of twin girls in January 2011, Yeh said.
The brother brought the twins back to Taiwan in February 2011 and registered the girls under his residence, becoming their father under Taiwanese law, she said.
Yeh told the court that she had taken care of the twins at her home, but that her brother reneged on their agreement by refusing to allow her to adopt the girls.
The brother took the girls back to his home in July 2018, asserting that he was their legal guardian.
Yeh the filed the lawsuit, alleging that her brother had broken their signed agreement that she could adopt the girls on their return to Taiwan.
“Under the current law it is illegal to do a business transaction for human reproductive cells. Though Taiwanese society has opened up in recent years ... purchasing human eggs to create a living human embryo is to monetize human life as a product, which is harmful to human dignity,” the court ruling said.
“Yeh and her brother had sought ‘assisted reproduction’ ... in Ukraine, where it is legal, but the arrangement contravened society’s moral values and, as such, the agreement between Yeh and her brother is invalid,” it added.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,