Surrogacy laws could help Taiwanese who are unable to conceive and remove the need for them to seek controversial international surrogacy, fertility experts said on Tuesday.
Progress on a draft surrogacy bill — which passed a first reading in May last year — has been stalled, despite widespread support, as there remain many technical and legal problems to solve, Health Promotion Administration (HPA) Maternal and Child Health Division Director Lin Yi-ching (林宜靜) said.
Surrogacy has been on the agenda at the legislature for years, and the HPA has held seven meetings on the issue in the past six months alone, but no real progress has been made, she said.
“The HPA has conducted three surveys, and there has consistently been support for surrogacy from 80 percent of respondents,” she said.
However, issues such as how to ensure that the rights of the child and biological mother are protected remain to be worked out, Lin said.
“Having a surrogacy law would solve some disputes and help those unable to conceive, but there are still some rights issues to consider,” Taiwan Society for Reproductive Medicine director Lee Mao-sheng (李茂盛) said.
One concern is that it would commodify wombs, he said, adding that some experts are also concerned that wealthy couples would exploit low-income women.
“There have also been cases of surrogates using extortion to make excessive demands of adoptive parents,” he said. “In other cases, surrogates have developed feelings for the child, and have gone into hiding to avoid handing the child over.”
In other cases, children of surrogates were born with birth defects and were abandoned by their adoptive parents, he said.
Meanwhile, local media reported on the problems faced by an unmarried man identified as A-Chiang (阿強), who had paid an intermediary couple to help him adopt twin boys through a surrogate in the Ukraine.
The report said that A-Chiang paid the couple — a man surnamed Liu (劉) and a woman surnamed Tsai (蔡) — NT$2.3 million (US$81,255) and traveled to Kiev with the couple to meet the surrogate and bring the children to Taiwan.
However, after arriving in Kiev, the couple refused to arrange for him to meet the surrogate and the children, and demanded more money, saying that they would have the electricity to the surrogate’s apartment cut if he did not pay.
Helped by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅), A-Chiang contacted Ukrainian authorities and was able to bring the children to Taiwan in November last year, the report said.
Additional reporting by Lu Yi-hsuan
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