Two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday urged the government to submit bills that would extend the use of assisted reproduction to single women and same-sex female couples, and promote gender equality education.
At a news conference marking the sixth anniversary of the passage of same-sex marriage legislation in Taiwan, DPP Legislator Huang Jie (黃捷) said that with 12,683 same-sex couples having registered marriages over the past six years, enacting the law was only a starting point.
Huang said she hoped that restrictions on transnational same-sex marriages could be eased and the adoption system could be improved, while also advocating amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) that would extend assisted reproduction to single women and same-sex female couples.
Photo: Liao Cheng-hui, Taipei Times
At present, only married heterosexual couples are allowed to pursue assisted reproduction, including artificial insemination, under Taiwanese law.
Huang urged the Cabinet and the Ministry of Health and Welfare to submit amendments that would change the “status quo.”
Doing so would allow more single women and lesbians to benefit and have children while they still can, she said.
She said that her advocacy of amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act would not include surrogacy issues, which have proven to be highly controversial in debates on amending the act.
Much more needed to be done to promote gender equality education, she said.
At the same event, DPP Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) also expressed hope that draft amendments on extending assisted reproduction the ministry previously agreed to would soon be put on the Legislative Yuan’s agenda.
The government’s stance on amending the law has been inconsistent, Taiwan Equality Campaign advocacy and civic engagement project manager Wong Yu-cin (翁鈺清) said.
She cited polls showing that support for lesbians using artificial reproduction dropped from 61.4 percent last year to 57.7 percent more recently, indicating that the public is perplexed by delays in pushing the policy forward.
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