Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) yesterday said the ministry does not have a predetermined stance on draft amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) to legalize surrogacy and expand eligibility to same-sex couples and single women, adding that it was working on a Cabinet proposal.
The Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday reviewed eight versions of draft amendments to the act, proposed by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislative caucus, and several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators.
Hsueh said the ministry is open to discussions about amending the act, and has been gathering data and opinions to draft a Cabinet version of the amendments, which address assisted reproduction for single women, same-sex couples and infertile heterosexual couples.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“We will provide our version of an amendment to these issues for further discussion, but it does not mean the ministry has a predetermined stance on which regulations should be eased and which ones should not,” he said.
The Cabinet’s amendment bill would be drafted carefully, as the issues are complicated, and touch on ethics and the legal protections of a surrogate mother, as well as a child’s interests and rights, he said.
The TPP legislative caucus’ draft proposes that single women and same-sex couples obtain court approval before healthcare facilities can perform assisted reproduction procedures for them, but that requirement would differ from current medical practices and lacks clear definitions of an applicants’ qualifications, application procedures and the court’s review standards, Hsueh said.
Some of the draft amendments from the TPP, KMT and DPP would legalize surrogacy based on reciprocity and monetary payment to the surrogate mother, but that could open the door to the commercialization of surrogacy, he said.
Some women’s rights groups have raised concerns that disadvantaged women might be exploited as surrogate mothers, or that legalizing the practice might reinforce the pressures on women to have children, he said.
The main concerns regarding surrogacy include: adequate protection of the surrogate mothers, as they face health risks from pregnancy; ethical considerations about using surrogates as a treatment tool for infertile couples; and the legal status of the child, Hsueh said.
While there are still controversies about legalizing surrogacy, there are fewer objections to expanding the eligibility of assisted reproduction to same-sex couples and single women, but supporting measures still need to be dealt with, he said.
DPP Legislator Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) said that a 2019 health ministry survey showed that 41.2 percent of women in common-law partnerships said they do not want to get married, while 30.1 percent of women who have been divorced said they do not want to remarry, meaning that more single women would become ineligible for assisted reproduction.
Hung said the act should be amended to allow single women and female same-sex couples to receive assisted reproduction, so that they do not have to risk going abroad and spending a lot of money for procedures.
The health ministry would take local customs, social expectations, other countries’ rules and procedures, and the child’s best interest into consideration as it gathers more data from experts in the fields of medicine, women’s rights, children’s rights, ethics and law, Hsueh said, adding that it might also hold public hearings on the amendments.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its