SMUGGLING SPERM

for the “rent a womb” business.

The boom in Laos, an authoritarian nation with no restrictions on surrogacy, comes after Thailand and Cambodia clamped down on the industry following a flurry of scandals and concerns about exploitation.

A number of Laos-linked surrogacy agencies and in-vitro fertilisation clinics had cropped up in recent months, according to consultancy group Families Through Surrogacy.

Some offer services to carry out the embryo transfer in Laos and provide pregnancy care for the surrogate in Thailand, a wealthier country with vastly superior medical facilities.

According to the customs officer, the man was carrying sperm donated from Chinese and Vietnamese men here.

He was fined for violating a law that bans exporting reproductive tissues.

For years, Thailand hosted a thriving yet largely unregulated international surrogacy industry popular with same-sex couples.

A string of scandals in 2014, including tussles over custody, spurred the military government to bar foreigners from using Thai surrogates.

In one high-profile controversy, authorities discovered nine babies in an apartment here that had been fathered by a Japanese man using Thai surrogate mothers.

Thailand's crackdown pushed the industry over to neighbouring Cambodia, where it took off until the government banned surrogacy last year. AFP Artisans working on sculptures of deities and creatures from ancient Indian epics to decorate the royal crematorium for the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the Office of Traditional Arts in Nakhon Pathom province, Thailand on Thursday. The cremation is planned for late October.