Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers on Monday called for the issue of surrogacy to be excluded from proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法). The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) announced its draft amendments on May 14, seeking to expand the use of assisted reproduction to same-sex couples, single women and surrogate mothers.
As DPP Legislator Lin Yueh-chin (林月琴) said, surrogacy is an ethically fraught issue, and there are concerns about the rights of surrogates and their children.
Much work must be done to ensure the protection of those rights, but surrogacy as an option to increase Taiwan’s rapidly declining birthrate should not be entirely dismissed. DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said that 23 countries in Europe prohibit surrogacy, but she neglected to mention that several countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Israel and Canada, as well as several US states, allow it.
Lawmakers could speak with their counterparts in countries where surrogacy is legal to see what issues have come up there and how they have been resolved.
There is concern that poor women could be coerced and exploited for their ability to bear children. To prevent that, measures are required to interview surrogates and those employing their services to understand their motivations, and to ensure they are aware of their options, as well as to ensure they fully understand the physical and mental implications of childbirth.
For example, Lin Shu-fen asked who would bear the responsibility if a surrogate suffers from mental or physical health complications, before or after childbirth. Rather than invoke such concerns as a reason to dismiss surrogacy altogether, lawmakers should discuss solutions, such as mandatory insurance for those employing surrogates. The MOHW could offer resources to surrogates and establish support groups for those who face postnatal depression.
If ministry officials consulted with prospective surrogates, they could prevent women from being coerced into unwanted childbirth or entering into surrogacy purely for financial reasons. Those doing so as a solution to financial difficulties could be offered assistance, such as interest-free loans, career guidance, subsidies or other measures. Those attempting to coerce women into surrogacy could be tried for criminal behavior.
People seeking to employ a surrogate could also be encouraged to consider adoption or, in the case of lesbian couples and single women, offered subsidies for in vitro fertilization or intrauterine insemination.
The law could also better protect the rights of surrogates and children by requiring those employing surrogates to accept custody in cases of birth defects and congenital anomalies. The law could require that only the surrogate be empowered to break the contract with those employing their services, which they would be permitted to do, unconditionally, up until the handover of the child’s custody to the new parents.
Therefore, those employing the surrogate would not be able to change their minds once conception has occurred, but the surrogate would retain the right to keep the child and raise it. The surrogate would lose that right once the new parents take custody, thereby protecting the child’s and the parents’ rights.
Lin Yueh-chin said surrogacy could “turn healthy children into consumer products,” while Lin Shu-fen said legislators should not force society to accept surrogacy. There are financial transactions involved in all normal childbirths in a developed country, but it is highly unlikely that any parent — whether they bear their children themselves or adopt them — would consider their children to be “products.” It is irrelevant what society thinks of legal actions individuals take.
DPP legislators are right to suggest that surrogacy should not be implemented without careful consideration. However, given Taiwan’s birthrate, all possible measures should be considered to increase the population. Lawmakers should form a committee and consult with experts to seriously deliberate on the issue.
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