Surrogacy is not allowed in the country, and the needs and interests contribute to a long-standing underground industry. The surrogacy industry chain is composed of the demand side, the surrogacy company, the egg donor, the surrogate mother, the doctor who performs the surrogacy operation, and the hospital that issues the birth certificate, either for the pursuit of profit, or for real needs, or for selfish purposes. Children, on the other hand, are manufactured "commodities" that can be selected as gender, single or multiple births. If there is a defect, it may be abandoned.
A "production line"
At the end of August this year, the surging news reporter secretly visited a number of commercial surrogacy companies in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places and found that due to the impact of the epidemic, the search for surrogacy abroad was blocked, the orders of domestic surrogacy intermediaries increased significantly, and the compensation of egg donors (known as "egg sisters" in the industry) and the commission of surrogate mothers also rose. After some surrogacy agencies are investigated, they will even change places to "return to their old business". Behind the commitment of the intermediary agency to "package success", there are chaos such as "egg replacement", concealment of fetal diseases, and survival defects, as well as ethical and legal risks.
An "Heir Inheritance International Fertility Center" claims to provide surrogacy services mainly for domestic customers with surrogacy needs to connect with overseas fertility hospitals. "Can be packaged gender, can be packaged success." They offer two packages, 580,000 yuan and 880,000 yuan, both of which promise customers to carry a healthy baby boy within 2 years. The former is 300,000 yuan cheaper, not including success, which means that the surrogacy is unsuccessful once, and the restart process needs to pay additional fees.
A senior surrogacy agent revealed that on this "production line", the number of children born in Guangzhou can reach 20,000 per year.
"650,000 packages of success, 900,000 packages of sons" "If fetal development deformities are found, the surrogate mother will be killed, and the customer will only take care of the 'receipt'" - this is the promise given by a number of commercial surrogacy companies in Shanghai. In September this year, a reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily secretly visited and investigated a number of commercial surrogacy companies in Shanghai and found that these intermediaries mostly used "health consulting companies" for industrial and commercial registration. A number of surrogacy intermediaries revealed to reporters that their customers come from all over the country, and many customers have gone bankrupt and asked for children.
For every successful "manufacturing" of a healthy baby, the intermediary agency can make at least 200,000 yuan in profits. For the various accidents that may occur between the fetus and the surrogate mother during the service, it is regarded as a "commercial risk", and it is bluntly said that "it can be settled with money".
Unpredictable "risks"
In the reporter's investigation, for the "risks" that may arise during the surrogacy process, the heads of several surrogacy companies are reluctant to mention more, but only say that "there is no absolute safety.".
According to an industry insider, the surrogacy industry itself is an "underground industry", and it is difficult for surrogacy companies to be 100% true and transparent. Among them, the most common is "fraud" against customers, mainly "egg exchange" and "concealment of infant disease".
The reporter's inquiry found that in a contract dispute case heard by the Zixing Municipal People's Court in Hunan Province in May this year, a couple paid more than 740,000 yuan to find that the child's hearing was weak after holding the baby at a surrogacy company called "Pregnancy International", so they sued the other party in court and demanded a refund of the fees paid. The head of the surrogacy company argued that the child was healthy when it was taken away, otherwise it would not be taken away, and issued a "collar note".
After trial, the court held that the surrogacy agreement signed by the two parties was obviously for the purpose of profit, and the child was the object of commodity trading, so the surrogacy contract violated public order and good customs and social morality, and should be regarded as an invalid contract according to law, and finally rejected the aforementioned couple's appeal.
A senior surrogacy agent said that a case of cerebral palsy made him remember deeply. A child born to a client's surrogate does not cry, only to find out that the hospital had a medical accident during childbirth: the child was born with a dead umbilical cord, knotted, and the surrogate mother was reluctant to choose caesarean section. The nurse kept pulling in and out, and the child had a lack of oxygen in his brain, resulting in cerebral palsy. At first, the guest was reluctant to have a child, and the agent returned all the money to him, but the other party did not accept it at first, and then "took the child while crying" .
There are also customers who temporarily regret not wanting children. A customer in Xiamen paid money, but when the child was about to be born, the customer regretted that he did not want to have another child and disappeared directly. No way, the agent ended up giving the child to someone else.
Depth
Can't be resolved
Ethical and emotional dilemmas
On September 18 this year, the reporter searched for the Chinese judgment document network with "surrogacy" as the keyword, and found that since 2012, a total of 338 disputes and judgments related to surrogacy have been searched, and the past two years have shown a rapid growth trend, of which 79 cases were searched in 2019, and 62 cases were searched in the first 8 months of 2020.
In 2012, Zhang Mou of Xiamen found Xiaoling through an intermediary to give birth to a child for him. Zhang paid Xiaoling 15,000 yuan per month for living expenses, accumulating more than 200,000 yuan. But afterwards, Xiaoling refused to give the child to Zhang and his wife to raise. In the end, the Siming District Court of Xiamen City sentenced the daughter born out of wedlock to Xiaoling to raise, and Zhang not only had no custody, but also had to pay 3,000 yuan of child support every month, accumulating 640,000 yuan.
In January 2017, because the surrogate baby was rejected after his visit was taken away, Zhao, as a surrogate mother, sued the child's father, Li, in court, expressing his willingness to refund the corresponding fees of Li and asking the child to live with him.
In 2017, Xie Mou, a surrogate mother in Chongqing, confronted the child's biological father, Gao Mou, and asked to visit and live with the child...
The underground industry of surrogacy has been continuously carried to the surface because of various disputes.
On the issue of surrogacy supervision, the reporter consulted the opinions of a number of lawyers. Deng Qianqiu, a lawyer at Beijing Zhongwen Law Firm, believes that the development of the underground surrogacy market will, on the one hand, bring about difficult ethical dilemmas such as "oviparous mother" and "birth mother", and on the other hand, it will also lead to the problem of raising defective babies by surrogacy, legal disputes caused by illegal surrogacy, and even criminal issues such as the sale of women and children.
To crack down on the underground surrogacy chaos, Du Jie, a lawyer at Beijing Longan Law Firm, believes that in addition to the health departments should implement stricter supervision over medical institutions and doctors, it is also necessary for the public security, industry and commerce, and industrial and information technology departments to form a joint force to govern and crack down on websites and surrogacy intermediaries that exist and disseminate harmful information.
Source: Dalian Evening News