Danger to women, children
Luo Ruixue, an expert on feminism and gender equality, told the Global Times on Tuesday that many women would choose to become a surrogate mother in order to improve their living conditions, but in most cases they are not informed about the risks in surrogacy.
“Unlike other work involving mental or physical labor, surrogacy brings great risks,” she said. Providing surrogacy service for reproduction is illegal in China, and there have been torrents of criticism and anger online in China against surrogacy following Zheng Shuang’s scandal. Most people disapprove of surrogacy as they hate seeing babies become a traded commodity, Luo said. “People are afraid that if surrogacy is allowed in China, the uterus becomes a production tool that can be rented and sold. In the situation of gender inequality, it might be possible that more women will become surrogate mothers, which involves the objectification of women.”
The surrogacy industry could also provide services such as picking genders and genes and there may be unwanted babies that are abandoned, Luo said.
There are also many hidden risks for those seeking surrogacy services overseas.
A Chinese woman surnamed Lin told the Global Times that she paid 450,000 yuan ($ 69,200) for a baby delivered by a surrogate Cambodian mother in 2016, but when the baby was brought back to China it was found that it was suffering from brain atrophy.
She blamed the company for failing to provide necessary living conditions for the Cambodian surrogate mother, which she believes to have directly caused her son’s illness. But when Lin contacted the agency, they simply said they would “replace her baby with a new one or arrange another surrogate birth, as long as it could be verified that it was their fault.”
Lin said that she knew of other people who were enquiring about surrogacy but were worried about whether the medical conditions were up to standard, especially in some Southeast Asian countries. “And the selection of surrogate mothers is not cautious and transparent as far as I know.”
“Instead of simply supporting or opposing surrogacy, we should focus more on the women driven by poverty to become a surrogate mother,” Chen Yaya, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.