Taiwan bars Thai surrogate mother company from seeking clients

The Nation
http://www.nationmultimedia.com

Sun, August 23, 2009

By Deutsche Presse Agentur

Taipei - Taiwan has warned a Thai surrogate company against seeking infertile-parent clients in Taiwan because Taipei's law still bans using surrogate mothers to produce babies, a newspaper said Sunday.

Wu Hsiu-ying, an official from the Council of Agriculture, told the Apple Daily that doctors who introduce infertile parents to a foreign surrogate mother company face loss of license and fines of up to 250,000 Taiwan dollars (7,500 US dollars.)

"Taiwan has not passed the surrogate mother bill. So if a doctor arranges a surrogate mother for infertile parents here, he or she could lose their doctor's license," she told the Apple Daily.

An Apple Daily reporter, posing as a client, had contacted the headquarters of a Thai firm, Baby 101, in Bangkok about the service. The reporter said he was told it would charge 50,000 dollars for the service.

The surrogate mothers, who were reportedly Vietnamese, live in a dormitory 20 minutes drive from Bangkok.

Baby 101 has been advertising to potential Taiwan clients for quite some time through a Chinese-language ad on the Internet. The ad lists Baby 101's headquarters' telephone number in the Thai capital Bangkok, and its branch company's telephone number in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

An estimated one of every seven Taiwan couples is incapable of bearing children, the Apple Daily reported.