Thai rent-a-womb trade reined in

[webfact]

Thai rent-a-womb trade reined in
Tan Hui Yee
The Straits Times

SINGAPORE: -- The 35-year-old housekeeper was five months' pregnant when she went on the run. The foetus in her womb belonged to a Chinese couple.

Suteera (not her real name) was supposed to hand over the baby at birth, but changed her mind. With her young son in tow, she fled some 700km from Bangkok to her home town on the Thai-Laos border.

It did not take long for the brokers behind the deal to show up. They offered the villagers 5,000 baht (about uS$154) each to find her. Two of them accosted her outside a provincial hospital.

"Please," she begged. "Have mercy on me. Who will look after my son if they take me away?"

As they hesitated, she slipped behind the hospital, hauling her awkward frame across rice fields and into a nearby village. She lost them, but only just.

Thailand's surrogacy industry is in turmoil. Roiled by back-to-back scandals since July, fertility clinics have shut down and pregnant surrogate mothers have reneged on deals, some avoiding pre-natal check-ups to avoid detection.

Foreign couples with fertility problems who paid thousands of dollars to have a Thai woman carry their child now find they have to clear more hurdles to take their babies home. Some babies have been put under state care.

Asean's second largest economy, with its low costs, lax laws and relatively good medical care, had until recently been a popular destination for surrogacy arrangements.

According to the Medical Travel Quality Alliance, a group that promotes quality treatment for medical tourists, about 1,000 surrogate babies are born in Thailand each year. That is a sixth of the number it estimates were born around the world last year through cross-border arrangements.

All of that has now ground to a halt, pending legislative changes accelerated by recent surrogacy scandals that have focused the spotlight on the more unsettling aspects of this practice.

In July, the focus was on Gammy, a surrogate baby born with Down syndrome allegedly abandoned by his Australian biological parents. Then came news that a Japanese man, 24-year-old Mitsutoki Shigeta, had reportedly fathered at least 16 babies through surrogacy arrangements.

Questionable conditions
Medical experts say there is a lot to clean up in the country's largely unregulated surrogacy scene.

"It's been messy for nearly 10 years," Dr Boonsaeng Wutthiphan, a veteran obstetrician and gynaecologist from Samitivej Sukhumvit Hospital, told The Sunday Times. He knows of at least one baby born with disabilities abandoned at a hospital by its surrogate mother.

A typical deal works like this: A woman - usually young and poor - is paid about 300,000 to 400,000 baht to carry a baby to full term. She is paid a portion of this sum upon being impregnated with the embryo of the commissioning couple - sometimes with the help of a third party's egg or sperm - and then receives a weekly stipend every month until delivery.

Her medical expenses are covered. In return, she is often made to stop work during pregnancy, and even moved to a specific accommodation two months before delivery. The broker who links surrogate mother with prospective parents takes a fee from both parties.

Individual terms and conditions vary and can be questionable. Jantra (not her real name), 30, sought out a surrogacy agent on Facebook earlier this year after her husband's imprisonment left her struggling to raise their four-year- old son alone. The drinks vendor was 20,000 baht in debt, and the 430,000 baht dangled for a pregnancy sounded enticing.

She was directed to an "interview" at a beauty clinic in Bangkok's Sukhumvit Road and was told she would be fined 5,000 to 10,000 baht per day if she worked during her pregnancy.

"The doctor said that if the baby turned out to be abnormal, I would be responsible for it," she said. She was also told that in the last two months of her pregnancy, she would be separated from her son, except for a monthly visit. She dropped the idea.

Lawyers and doctors familiar with surrogacy arrangements say single women or women who have not registered their marriages - a common practice in Thailand - are preferred as surrogate mothers as this makes it easier to put the biological father's name on the baby's birth certificate.

This was the case for Suteera, though it did not stop other complications from arising.

She was unwittingly roped in by two friends while giving them a motorcycle ride to a surrogacy agent's office in eastern Bangkok early this year. Her friends put her details on a registration form.

"They asked me to sign my name first and decide later," she said. Two weeks later, she was impregnated.

At first, her 50-year-old husband thought the child was his. "I was just glad to have a second child to be company for our first," he said.

Nerve-wracking as it was, Suteera kept up the pretence for three months. Her husband grew increasingly suspicious when her check-ups were at a private hospital, which was beyond their means.

Then the Chinese couple wanted her to travel to China to deliver the baby. "I was so stressed. I couldn't sleep," she said.

The last straw was when Baby Gammy made international news headlines, putting surrogacy deals under scrutiny.

Suteera came clean to her husband and the couple decided to keep the baby. They criss-crossed Thailand separately to throw off the brokers who had, by then, paid Suteera 45,000 baht. The couple eventually found shelter at a local foundation.

Over in Bangkok, the Japanese man who fathered multiple babies remains an enigma. Several Japanese media outlets have identified him as the son of Yasumitsu Shigeta, the founder of mobile phone distributor Hikari Tsushin who, according to Forbes, has a net worth of US$2.7 billion.

Initial suspicions that the younger Shigeta's babies were being trafficked were unfounded, said police colonel Pakphum Poolsiripokha, the chief investigator at Lat Phrao police station, which handled the case.

In fact, no charges have been laid against Shigeta. All his paperwork was in order. "There were no fake documents. It was all 'riap roy mot'," the police officer told The Sunday Times, using the Thai expression for "complete".

Shigeta's agents in Bangkok took care of the surrogate mothers and kept his babies' nannies well stocked with necessities.

All three infants that he took from Thailand to Cambodia bore his surname, said Col Pakphum. They included twins called Emily and Nina.

Shigeta's lawyer, who did not respond to a request for an interview, also provided police with photographs of his client's mother carrying the surrogate children.

His babies in Thailand, meanwhile, have been moved to a state- run orphanage and the authorities have denied his requests for their nannies to be with them.

"What we want now is to be able to question him - why so many children?" said the investigator. He added that until Shigeta turns up, "there's no way he can take the babies out of Thailand".

Fair deal possible

Thailand's draft law - which could take at least three months to be put to the legislature - aims to ban commercial surrogacy altogether. While it will allow the names of a surrogate baby's biological parents to appear on the birth certificate, it will also require that surrogate mothers be relatives of biological parents.

Advertisements for surrogacy services will be banned and violators will face 10 years in jail and a 200,000 baht fine.

Although the country appears to be shutting the door to foreign couples, doctors interviewed are more hopeful.

"It's not the end yet," said Dr Boonsaeng. "It's still subject to debate."

Some quarters in Thai society reject cross-border surrogacy, calling it "baby selling", but others see it as just another ticket to a better life, which can be regulated to protect the welfare of all involved.

"We are not a baby factory," said Dr Somsak Lolekha, chairman of the Medical Council of Thailand. But childbirth, like marriage, is a personal decision that can be hard to legislate. "In some villages in Thailand, all the women marry old European men. Should we allow them to do it? But it's their right."

With or without the law, there remains a big demand for babies from places like China, Taiwan and Japan, said Julie Munro, president of Medical Travel Quality Alliance.

As a result, those in the surrogacy business are starting to look into alternative arrangements involving fertility treatment in Thailand and dormitories for surrogate mothers in places like Cambodia or Nepal, where surrogacy is not explicitly outlawed.

"The need is there," she said. "It's not like it's going to stop, whether or not there are sanctions."

Suteera, meanwhile, will give birth in about two months. She and her husband do not know if it is a boy or girl, but plan to raise the baby as their own.

Asked if he will ever reveal that the child was a surrogate baby, the husband paused before replying: "If nobody asks, I won't tell."

(1 baht = US$0.03)

Source: http://www.asianewsnet.net/news-66500.html


-- ANN 2014-10-27

[noitom]

This sub standard writer should spend some time doing an investigative journalism piece on the Thai Big Men behind the racket instead of attempting to humiliate the poor Thai women who go for these deals. Remarks like she "hauled her awkward frame" across rice fields to escape once she changed her mind. Numerous other derogatory and blame placing on the poor can be found in this tripe.

[rhythmworx]

"Rent a womb" ... wasn't that an 80's kids TV show in the UK?

[ChrisY1]

The style with which this article is written, portrays the women as the cause of all the issues........it's pretty poor.

The agents, and most likely the people behind these agencies are the culprits.....reaping in big rewards for dealing in humans!

[wilcopops]

just another facet of the appalling healthcare industry in Thailand

[Friendly Stranger]

What a f'd up story.

[Sviss Geez]

just another facet of the appalling healthcare industry in Thailand

Surrogacy has nothing whatsoever to do with the Thai healthcare system.

[Sviss Geez]

This sub standard writer should spend some time doing an investigative journalism piece on the Thai Big Men behind the racket instead of attempting to humiliate the poor Thai women who go for these deals. Remarks like she "hauled her awkward frame" across rice fields to escape once she changed her mind. Numerous other derogatory and blame placing on the poor can be found in this tripe.

The writer of this well-written article is attempting to expose the plight of some women who realise the mistake they have made when they got involved in these arrangements. It is not apportioning blame in any way to those women and your ability to twist a reasonable argument made in the OP actually makes your post, to quote you, "tripe".

[Chao Lao Beach]

Author, apparently female

bio: http://www.stasiareport.com/asiareport/profile/Tan%20Hui%20Yee-616874

[55Jay]

Seems the author has taken some inspiration from Stephen Leatherman paperbacks.

[Roadman]

This sub standard writer should spend some time doing an investigative journalism piece on the Thai Big Men behind the racket instead of attempting to humiliate the poor Thai women who go for these deals. Remarks like she "hauled her awkward frame" across rice fields to escape once she changed her mind. Numerous other derogatory and blame placing on the poor can be found in this tripe.

The writer of this well-written article is attempting to expose the plight of some women who realise the mistake they have made when they got involved in these arrangements. It is not apportioning blame in any way to those women and your ability to twist a reasonable argument made in the OP actually makes your post, to quote you, "tripe".

Quite agree. But normal on here.

How abhorant the whole process has been is comments that if the baby is born abnormal then the liability is with the mother. Again as you point out the author has done her job in exposing the scumbags who were making the money.

The good news is that under the Junta the whole mess has been reigned in and people being held to account.

[mikiea]

b- grade, high school senior work at best , rambles on & on :-)

[Commerce]

And the local BIB have no idea about these events, of course. Say no more.

[rickirs]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

"Rent a womb" ... wasn't that an 80's kids TV show in the UK?

or Romper Womb in the US?

[Commerce]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

"Rent a womb" ... wasn't that an 80's kids TV show in the UK?

or Romper Womb in the US?

'Raiders of the Lost Ark', and the tomb within?

[iReason]

"The need is there," she said. "It's not like it's going to stop, whether or not there are sanctions."

Yes.

The need for greed.

[Crazy chef 1]

and Thailand is still astonished not to be a member of the human right association????