Black-market surrogacy still unchecked in China

(Ecns.cn) -- The illegal market for surrogate mothers continues to thrive in China, as more couples struggle to conceive due to mounting pressures and environmental deterioration, reports Xinmin Weekly magazine.

According to Shanghai No. 1 Maternity and Child Health Center, outpatient service at its infertility department has seen an annual growth of 30 to 50 percent over the past five years.

In Shanghai, official statistics show that the annual number of babies born after parents use in-vitro fertilization (IVF) has more than doubled, exceeding 20,000 last year.

But hospitals are far from able to satisfy demand, forcing many infertile couples to hire women to have children for them illegally.

Cai is a wealthy businesswoman in Wenzhou, a city in east China's Zhejiang Province. Although she has many houses, cars and plenty of money, she has no child.

For the past few years, Cai has visited countless hospitals and clinics, taken different medicines and tried numerous operations, all in vain.

She was finally diagnosed with blocked fallopian tubes and low-functioning ovaries, yet all top-ranking hospitals have refused to offer her IVF treatment.

Faced with no other option, most couples choose surrogacy agencies, which offer package services without causing much inconvenience, says Xinmin Weekly.

It's all about the money, says Mr. Chen, a lawyer with extensive experience in the industry.

Some agencies not only offer surrogate motherhood for babies born after using IVF treatment, artificial insemination or natural pregnancy, they also offer human eggs from women of foreign nationalities, says Chen.

If a customer is willing to pay 1.5 million yuan (US$240,150), he or she can buy an egg from an American woman and let her carry the fertilized one until delivery, he adds.

The black market has become huge, especially in the southern parts of China. Artificial insemination is the most popular program, costing between 120,000 and 200,000 yuan (US$19,210 and US$32,000), according to Xinmin Weekly.

With the help of surrogacy agencies, customers can have their operations on the Chinese mainland or in Hong Kong; the only difference is that gender selection is forbidden at Hong Kong medical institutions if the egg is already fertilized, says Chen.

Customers influenced by the "clan" tradition may only opt for mainland hospitals to guarantee the gender of the baby (usually male), which costs more, he says.

However, even at such high costs, surrogacy can go very wrong.

Chen described an incident that took place in 2004, when a couple both in their late 50s lost their only child in a car accident and decided to have another one via surrogate.

With Chen's help, they found a girl from the countryside in Anhui Province who charged 60,000 yuan (US$9,606) to carry the child.

Because the cooperation was successful and the baby was a boy, the surrogate mother was paid a bonus of 100,000 yuan (US$16,000).

But in a surprising turn of events, the girl claimed that she had developed feelings for the child and took the couple to court in order to get visitation rights.

The case was settled only after the couple agreed to pay the woman additional compensation and let her visit the child once a month, according to Chen.

Infertility is particularly painful for families who have lost their only children to accidents. Numerous children were unexpectedly killed in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, for example, but many of their aged parents could not conceive again.

Although it is understandable for these families to exploit the loopholes in the surrogacy industry, they are at risk, because there are no laws to protect them, Xinmin Weekly points out.