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
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS