The Ministry of Health and Welfare said it has decided to separate the issue of surrogacy from its proposed package of amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法).
The ministry’s draft amendments were first announced on May 14, with the ministry aiming to broaden access to artificial insemination for single women, same-sex couples and surrogate mothers.
The amendments were to be submitted to the Legislative Yuan for review this month, but the ministry changed its position after women’s groups and lawmakers opposed the proposed “surrogate mother system.”
Photo: CNA
Surrogacy is illegal in Taiwan, but concerns about the nation’s falling fertility rate and declining population have shifted public opinion toward allowing couples to use surrogate mothers.
On Monday morning, eight Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers called for the issue of surrogacy to be addressed separately from the Assisted Reproduction Act, and the ministry later that day announced it would first deal with the draft amendments in which a consensus has been achieved — including broadening eligibility for assisted reproduction to lesbians and single women — while addressing the more contentious issue of surrogacy separately.
“Civil society groups and the public have continued to express their opposition to surrogacy,” Health Promotion Administration Director-General Wu Chao-chun (吳昭軍) said.
A survey found that “about 80 percent” of more than 600 comments received by the ministry concerning potential changes to the law expressed opposition to surrogacy, Wu said.
“It is difficult to weigh the rights and interests of various stakeholders involved in the surrogacy process,” he said, referring to surrogate children, surrogate mothers and those seeking surrogate births.
Given the change in direction on surrogacy, the ministry will revise its package of amendments and submit it for approval to the Executive Yuan by the end of the year before sending it to the Legislative Yuan for review.
Before then, the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee is scheduled to review tomorrow 16 amendments proposed by various political parties.
A coalition of women’s rights groups — including the League of Taiwan Women — yesterday said that surrogacy is harmful to human rights, urging lawmakers to oppose its legalization.
The coalition added that it would hold protests tomorrow when the legislative committees begin reviewing the bill.
Taiwan Anti-Surrogate Pregnancy Action Group spokeswoman Chen Kai-ning (陳愷寧) said the nation should not commodify women’s wombs for the sake of procreation or boosting birthrates.
Women’s bodies are not reproductive tools and infants are not merchandise, she said.
Separately yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Ching-hui (陳菁徽), who is also a fertility specialist, panned the ministry for dropping surrogacy from the proposed amendments to the act, saying the decision politicized a livelihood issue.
The bill had formerly enjoyed support from across the political divide for its potential to improve the lives of LGBTQ people, single women and women with womb disorders, she said, adding that lawmakers need to discuss the matter.
President William Lai (賴清德), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chih-mai (陳其邁) 22 years ago cosponsored the first-ever bill to legalize surrogacy when they were lawmakers, she said.
The DPP caucus similarly supported a version of the act’s amendments that included legalizing surrogacy legalization in the previous legislative session, only to turn against it the day before, Chen said.
Criticism that surrogate pregnancy would commodify the womb stems from ideological and political manipulations that contravene the opinions of experts and medical professionals consulted in the law’s writing, she said.
Taiwanese women are having children at an increasingly older age, resulting in higher risks of complications that affect fertility, Chen Ching-hui said, adding that surrogacy could be an option for those who want, but cannot have children.
The nation that promulgated marriage equality in 2016 should do more to guarantee LGBTQ couples also enjoy the right to have children, she said.
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