"For one hundred percent profit, it dares to trample on all human laws; with three hundred percent profit, it dares to commit any crime, even at the risk of being hanged."
- Marx, Capital
Recently, the "surrogacy and abandonment" incident between Zheng Shuang and Zhang Heng has intensified, and even Japanese netizens on the other side of the sea are paying attention:
The so-called "surrogacy" refers to the in vitro fertilization of the egg after the formation of embryos, it is implanted in the womb of the surrogate mother, and the surrogate mother completes the process of pregnancy and childbirth, which is one of the technologies of artificial assisted reproduction.
Basically most countries have banned surrogacy, and India and Thailand, countries that once legalized commercial surrogacy, both stopped offering commercial surrogacy to foreigners in 2015.
Currently, only in some states of the United States, Ukraine and Russia, commercial surrogacy is legal.
However, some countries, such as Japan, have not yet introduced laws related to "surrogacy", and there is neither a prohibition nor permission for surrogacy.
In this way, surrogacy seems to have become a gray area of unregulated supervision, which has spawned a series of moral and ethical and legal issues that are slanderous and even unusually harsh.
Popular diva "surrogacy" doubts?
Back in the past, the topic of "surrogacy" was all over The world in Japan was in early January 2020.
At that time, the popular diva Ayumi Hamasaki announced that she had already had a child in November 2019, which shocked the outside world.
After all, Sister Bu has a close schedule in 2019, and she has held more than 40 concerts in this year, including a New Year's Eve concert on December 31, a month after giving birth.
In addition, the state of Sister Bu at the New Year's Eve concert is too good, and there is no difference between her body, spirit, physical strength and other aspects, so the Japanese media questioned her as a "surrogate", and wrote small essays out of nothing, which triggered heated discussion.
Public opinion continues to ferment, including a large number of personal attacks of the comments, for this step sister deliberately on the social platform to clarify, smashed the "surrogacy rumors":
She confessed that she has a fantastic team that can protect and help herself in all aspects, and the hospital also provides 24-hour assistance. As a result, she was able to get back on stage quickly. But that doesn't mean all women can get back to action after giving birth. She felt the physical and mental hardships, thanked her family and friends for their support and companionship, and hoped that all Japanese big moms and pregnant women would have plenty of time to recuperate.
In fact, if you look closely at Bu Jie's social platform, you can find clues about her pregnancy.
In August 2019, she began to wear loose clothes to cover her belly frequently, and most of the photos posted later were busts. In November of the same year, she was secretly photographed by paparazzi, and her whole body was tightly wrapped.
For the sake of her baby, she also stopped the tradition of hair coloring and nail polishing.
After giving birth, Sister Bu recovered so quickly through active postpartum recovery training, coupled with years of exercise and exercise.
However, in an interview with Wenchun, she said that after giving birth to her child, "the pelvis is no longer working, the body is uncomfortable, and she needs to go to the hospital regularly for treatment." ”
At this point, after many clarifications and self-evidence, the "surrogacy" doubt that inexplicably hung on the head of Sister Bu finally dissipated, and the public finally accepted the fact that "Ayumi Hamasaki personally gave birth to a child through a pregnancy in October".
It can be seen that even if "surrogacy" is in a gray area in Japan, the public is still very resistant to it. If a public figure has the behavior of "surrogacy", it will be criticized by public opinion, and even spurned.
However, there are still people in Japan who choose surrogacy for different reasons and needs. However, in the same end, the current laws in Japan cannot guarantee the nationality and rights of their surrogate children.
Surrogacy in Japan:
A hundred kinds of humanity in the gray area
As mentioned earlier, japan has not enacted any laws on "surrogacy" so far. Thus, in law, surrogacy is neither prohibited nor permitted.
All parts of Japan implement "independent circumvention" of surrogacy, and in principle do not implement reproductive assistance of "surrogacy and childbirth".
However, on the moral and ethical level, official associations, including the Japan Medical Doctor Association, stipulate that "surrogacy is not allowed."
As a result, some Japanese couples with fertility problems have turned their attention overseas.
Since the 1990s, overseas surrogacy agencies have emerged in Japan. According to statistics, as of 2014, more than 100 Japanese couples have successfully obtained children through overseas surrogacy.
The most famous of these are Mr. and Mrs. Akinaki Takada.
After Japanese entertainer Yaki Xiangi married wrestler Nobuhiko Takada, she was told in September 2000 that she had cervical cancer and had to have her uterus removed immediately. After the operation, Xiang Jing said at a press conference that he could not have children. So the couple went to the United States to become a surrogate.
They believe that surrogacy has the last resort to having their own child.
In 2002, they traveled to the United States several times, but unfortunately the fertilized egg failed twice in the surrogate mother's body, and just when they were desperate, the surrogate mother's third implantation was successful.
They were overjoyed with twins and prepared to bring them back to Japan, but bigger problems ensued.
When they returned to Japan with the twins in 2003 to prepare for naturalization, the Japanese authorities decided that Xiangjing could not register as the birth mother.
Because under Japanese law, only the person who gave birth in person can be considered the mother of the child, so the biological mother of the twins is still legally a surrogate mother.
XiangJing was very dissatisfied with this, so she sued the relevant departments to the Japanese Supreme Court. The lawsuit lasted until 2007.
In March 2007, Japan's Supreme Court found that "giving birth to a child by womb" did not have a mother-child relationship, so it did not recognize Xiangjing as the mother of the twins in the legal sense.
After losing the case, XiangJing did not give up the hard-won twins, and she made the twins her family through the only way of adoption.
This experience was later made into a Japanese drama.
This is the legal question raised by surrogacy: is the legal mother of a child born through surrogacy a client, an egg provider, or a surrogate mother?
Japanese law recognizes that "personal childbirth" is the mother of a child. Therefore, Xiangjing can only become the adoptive mother of the child. So who is the mother of a surrogate child who is neither recognized by the surrogate mother nor by the client?
In 2008, the Yamadas commissioned an Indian surrogate mother to give birth to a baby girl, Manji. Sperm come from Yamada and eggs come from donors.
However, before the birth of the child, the Yamada couple divorced. Subsequently, Both Japan and India refused to grant Manji citizenship, and both the surrogate mother and Yamada's wife refused to recognize Manji.
At this time, Yamada offered to adopt, but local Indian law does not allow single men to adopt girls.
The matter then became a stir internationally, and after much fighting, Manji was allowed to travel to Japan and be cared for by Yamada's mother.
XiangJing and Yamada are bent on having their own children through surrogacy, but there are also people with ghost fetuses who try to realize some of their own conspiracies through "surrogacy".
According to the Asahi Shimbun, in 2014, Thai police found nine babies in an apartment while fighting illegal surrogacy. After investigation, the 9 babies were all born from the same father through surrogacy.
This person is Shigeta Koshi, the son of Yasumitsu Shigeta, the founder of Japan's "optical communication", and a veritable rich second generation.
As of 2018, Shigeta, who is only 24 years old, has a total of 21 surrogate children through surrogacy, distributed in Thailand and Cambodia. Egg providers, including women from China, Spain, Australia, the United States and other countries. Each surrogate mother is paid an average of $10,000.
Shigeta believes that "mass childbirth is the greatest good in life", he hopes to find more surrogate mothers, planning to have 5 to 10 children a year, preferably 1,000, to benefit the world.
He hopes that there will be more heirs who can manage assets and even create a large family to vote for himself, and later be able to win elections in Japan.
However, there are Japanese media reports that the back of Shigeta surrogacy is not simple. His father was a fan of Hitler, and he had always been obsessed with his "ideas" such as excellent genes and racial purification, and even tried to achieve it by surrogacy.
At this time, the Thai police believed that Shigeta Hikari was suspected of "human trafficking" and "child exploitation". Because he has passports from more than 10 countries, every time he leaves Thailand with a surrogate baby, the destination is not Japan, but a neighboring country.
After investigation, Shigeta was not suspected of the above, he had a legal residence in these places, and invited someone to take care of the children.
However, the police found that the doctor who was engaged in surrogacy surgery did not have relevant authority, so they determined that he did not have custody of 13 of the children.
As a result, Shigeta sued the Thai authorities and began a long-running lawsuit. He claimed that he had the income and assets to raise the children, and demanded legal custody of the children. In addition, all surrogate mothers have given up custody of their children.
Finally, according to the ruling of the Thai Family Court, Shigeta was in a stable financial position, the only legal guardian of the children, and there was no human trafficking, so he obtained custody of the 13 children.
Taking this incident as an opportunity, in 2015, Thailand introduced a new surrogacy law: it stipulates that at least one of the husband and wife is Thai and married for more than three years before seeking surrogacy services; surrogacy services cannot be provided to foreigners. In the event of a violation, they face 10 years in prison.
In addition, there have been Chinese couples who have gone to Japan for surrogacy in order to be able to stay in Japan.
According to Japanese media reports, many Chinese couples with fertility problems go to Japan through underground intermediaries to find surrogacy, and the cost per time is 15 million yen. In the process, Japanese gangsters were involved.
The vast majority of surrogate mothers are Chinese women living in Japan, and a very small number are Japanese. Many people choose surrogacy to improve their lives or pay off their debts, and they can get paid 2 million yen for each success.
After the current pregnant mother gives birth to the baby, the Japanese gangster lends out the identity to register the household registration, and when the baby is older, the client obtains the right of abode in Japan by adoption.
Surrogacy is chaotic in Japan. Therefore, it is urgent to introduce relevant laws to restrain and prohibit it.
Japan does not have legal provisions on assisted reproductive medical conditions that use third-party sperm or eggs to complete pregnancy, and in November last year, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Komeito Party discussed and submitted relevant bills.
The Act states that a woman who conceives and gives birth with the help of a third party's egg is considered the mother of the child and, with the consent of the husband, the father of a child conceived with the help of a third party's sperm is the husband himself.
For "surrogacy", the Japanese government also plans to enact the necessary laws within two years.
The evil of surrogacy is more terrible than we think
In December 2017, NHK broadcast the surrogacy documentary "Buying Life, The Rising Surrogacy Industry in China and the United States", exposing the true face of the surrogacy industry and the chaos around surrogacy from a neutral and objective standpoint:
A surrogacy agency that "regards the baby as a commodity and benefits the most"
The surrogacy agent who "ran away with money when he was killed"
"Pick and choose, do not like to return at any time" entrusted couple
Surrogate mother who "takes risks for money, is exploited and oppressed"
According to the documentary, since China opened up the "two-child" policy in January 2016, more and more people plan to have a second child. But most of them are 40 years old, and at least 20,000 couples travel to the United States each year to treat infertility, which has also spawned a huge surrogacy industry.
California is a surrogacy mecca in the United States. Here, surrogacy is legal, and there is no relevant law to restrict surrogacy, surrogacy technology is relatively mature, so half of the surrogacy agencies in the United States gather here.
Among them, 90% of the customers of a surrogacy agency are Chinese. Most Chinese couples will choose to choose the sex of their babies. For surrogate mothers, Chinese couples also have their own preferences, with white and Latin American surrogate mothers being the most popular, while black women are the least popular.
In order to meet the needs of the client and improve the fertility rate, the general surrogate mother will be implanted with more than two fertilized eggs. This means that they take greater risks biologically.
Surrogate mothers can get paid 4 million to 6 million yen through surrogacy. However, the premise is that they will successfully give birth to a healthy baby that the order client is satisfied with. This means that surrogate mothers have to bear multiple risks physically, psychologically and financially.
As in the recording exposed by the Zheng Shuang incident, when the surrogate mother was pregnant in the seventh month of pregnancy, she proposed to "return the goods" and said that "TMD, can't be beaten, annoyed to death."
This phenomenon of "returns" is extremely common in the surrogacy industry.
These couples seeking surrogacy treat their children as commodities and can ignore them at any time. When you don't want it, the baby becomes medical waste.
For example, in the documentary, Allison was asked by the couple to implant two fertilized eggs. As a result, at 25 weeks of pregnancy, the child was born prematurely. However, the client believed that the premature baby would have sequelae, so he refused to accept it and demanded that the premature twins be treated as medical waste.
So the twins died in Allison's arms.
In addition, because he could not successfully give birth to the baby, Allison did not receive any fees. There was also a hospital bill of up to $40,000, which was originally paid by the Chinese couple, but the Chinese couple said that they had given it to the intermediary, and the intermediary saw that the person was killed, and it was suspected that the money had escaped.
Such "returns" are also reflected in the documentary "Motherland", which exposes Ukraine's shady surrogacy industry.
Abandoned by her American parents because of her flaws, Bridget, premature baby, is not the only child to be abandoned, but one of thousands of abandoned children.
Last year, because of the epidemic, Ukraine decided to close its borders in March 2020, and in May, nearly 100 babies born through surrogacy were trapped in Ukraine, many of which were "returned" by overseas parents.
At the end of the day, surrogacy is a matter of class and economy. In order to seek a better life, the bottom women have no choice but to sell their wombs and become fertility machines.
For surrogate mothers, surrogacy is not only exploitative, but also exploitative for them. A large surrogacy fee represents that they have to risk physical pain, dignity insults, and risks of life to accept endless, even inhumane demands.
For the money, go surrogacy.
This phenomenon is even more pronounced in India. The BBC documentary "The Surrogate" revealed that a child in India only costs about $30,000, but in the hands of the surrogate mother, it is only $8,000. However, there are still many Indian women who choose this road of no return for the sake of their families' lives.
If they encounter an accident such as blood transfusion, uterus removal or even death on the way, the clinic and the client do not need to take any risks.
Surrogate mothers in different countries experience the same, as the Ukrainian surrogate mother of Motherland said, "The surrogate mother is just a machine, an incubator." They don't see you as human and won't understand you. ”
"For one hundred percent profit, it dares to trample on all human laws; with three hundred percent profit, it dares to commit any crime, even at the risk of being hanged." - Marx, Capital
Surrogacy is also a problem of the huge gap between the rich and the poor.
In the NHK documentary, the surrogate mother Tania's life is stretched, for a large fee, desperate to choose surrogacy, in order to live in a house with a monthly rent of 100,000 yen, can not bear a weekly organic food expenses of $150, in order to surrogate quit work backwaters, but for a long time suffered from the inability to get pregnant smoothly.
And Ms. Li, the capitalist who made the deal, dressed brightly and used the blood and tears of countless surrogate mothers to live in a mansion worth 300 million yen, she compared her children to cars, hoping that her surrogacy company would be like Toyota.
In addition, she set her sights on young girls, commented heavily on the price of eggs for girls of different races, and started egg trading.
There is no doubt that surrogacy, like the sex industry, if legalized, will only push women into an endless abyss. Eggs, uterus, and babies are all placed on the shelves for the rich to choose from, and those of bad quality will be abandoned.
The legalization of surrogacy is the recognition that the female uterus is a commodity that can enter the market circulation. In pursuit of profit maximization, women are kept, resold, exploited and oppressed like cattle. It is difficult to distinguish between voluntary or not, or forced voluntary.
When reproductive rights are deprived, then the reason why people's value as human beings no longer exists, will also give rise to various illegal acts: mass production of human organs, trafficking in organs, trafficking in human beings, human trafficking, and other moral and ethical, legal issues.
Absolute freedom means the exploitation and oppression of the weak by the strong, resistance to surrogacy, rejection of the "omnipotence of money", the return of human dignity as a human being, the failure to let the "story of the handmaiden" become a reality, respect for life, reverence for life.
※ This content is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent the position of Nippon Pass.
- Ends -
Selected New Books of Iwanami (8 volumes)
Known in Japan as the "Book of Cultivation"