Baby business booming in Canada
Would-be parents are looking here after some Asian countries stop practice
TORONTO — As doors are closed in some Asian countries, foreigners are flocking to Canada to make use of its surrogate mothers — and the taxpayerfinanced health care system that looks after them, consultants and lawyers say.
One agency that helps “intended parents” work with surrogates says it has been “overwhelmed” with a tenfold increase in business over the last few months.
Owner Sally Rhoads-Heinrich cites the closing recently of international surrogacy arrangements in Thailand, Nepal and — for same-sex couples — India.
Some parents are even having embryos they had stored in such countries shipped to Canada to restart the process here, said another consultant.
“I’m averaging about 600 emails a day,” said Rhoads-Heinrich. “I start usually at about 6:30 in the morning and I’m going until 11:30 at night. I can’t keep on top of it right now so I’ve had to hire more people.”
She used to sign up 20 to 40 clients a year, but now has more than 200, part of an industry estimated to be worth billions worldwide.
Rhoads-Heinrich worries, though, that people from overseas are essentially taking advantage of the fact Canadian surrogates are covered by medicare, an advantage promoted by at least one of her competitors.
“I don’t like Canada being seen as just a free-for-all for people to come here and use our health care system,” she said. “We’re being flooded and I’m not seeing Canadian couples being helped. I’m seeing a lot of international couples being helped.”
The demand comes largely from other developed countries with more restrictive laws. Some, like France and Germany, ban surrogacy outright, while others, such as Israel, do not allow it for same-sex couples or single people. Canadian law permits the practice, but prohibits commercial fees, a system on the verge of being tightened by contentious new rules.
In the meantime, business is booming.
Leia Swanberg of Canadian Fertility Consultants says demand for surrogates has swelled 25 per cent because of international would-be parents and Canadians being frozen out of Nepal, Thailand and India.
Her business overall has doubled since she faced a landmark criminal prosecution in 2013 over paying surrogates and egg donors’ fees — and receiving money for referring parents to a notorious U.S. broker.
“We are very busy,” said Swanberg, who stressed she has changed her company’s practices to comply with the law. “Currently, we have over 60 surrogates pregnant, and many more waiting to become pregnant.”
Some of her clients had already started the process in Thailand, which banned foreigners hiring local women to have their babies in February, or Nepal, whose Supreme Court halted commercial surrogacy last month.
So long as the embryos in those countries undergo the same kind of infectious-disease and other testing they would here, Health Canada allows them to be shipped to a Canadian clinic, said Swanberg. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration, on the other hand, requires they be tested first in an FDA-certified lab, making shipment to the U.S. all but impossible.
Others in the industry, like Toronto-based fertility lawyer Sara Cohen, say they have not seen a dramatic bump from developments in Asia, but confirm the number of foreign parents looking for Canadian surrogates has definitely grown in the last few years.
Cohen believes Canada does not compete so much with lower-cost, developing nations, as with the U.S., where many states allow commercial surrogacy transactions.
Before opting for a Canadian surrogate, she said, many of her clients explore — and then reject — the American experience.
“They said it was almost like they were looking to buy a family car and that’s not the feeling they wanted to have,” said Cohen from Israel, where she was meeting more potential clients.
Michelle Flowerday, another fertility lawyer, reported a modest increase in international inquiries, saying foreign parents appreciate Canadian jurisdictions put only the intended parents’ names on birth certificates — and not the surrogate’s. That makes bringing the newborn home smoother.
“I think they view Canada as a surrogacy-friendly jurisdiction,” she said.
Another draw is undoubtedly Canada’s relative cheapness: having someone carry a baby here can be a third of the price in the U.S., where surrogates earn as much as $50,000 on top of expenses, says Swanberg.
Doctors’ appointments for Canadian carriers are also paid for by medicare, and hospitals only recently started charging foreign parents for care of the babies.
Although Swanberg says many international parents are attracted by the relatively conservative approach to fertility treatment here, her website does note Canada has a great “social health care” system.
Meanwhile, a new variable is about to be thrown into the burgeoning business, one that some players believe could dry up the pool of available surrogates.
The vaguely worded fertility law could be tightened up. New rules prepared for Health Canada by the Canadian Standards Association would set out exactly what kind of expense payments surrogates and egg and sperm donors can claim.
Rhoads-Heinrich, Swanberg and Cohen all said they feared the new regulations, if adopted by the government, will preclude some payments for legitimate expenses.
But Sherry Levitan, a fertility lawyer who sat on the expert committee that drafted them, said the rules simply embody the anti-commercial spirit at the core of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.
“If a surrogate is looking for compensation, she would be deterred by these guidelines, and that is fine,” said the lawyer.
“It’s not a business, and shouldn’t be a business.”