Yahoo – AFP,
28 Nov 2014
Thailand's parliament has voted to ban commercial surrogacy after outrage erupted over the largely unregulated industry following allegations an Australian couple abandoned a baby with Down's syndrome, a legislator said Friday.
Thai surrogate mother Pattaramon Chanbua (L) was at the centre of a surrogacy scandal when Australian parents rejected the Downs Syndrom baby she was carrying for them (AFP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri) |
Thailand's parliament has voted to ban commercial surrogacy after outrage erupted over the largely unregulated industry following allegations an Australian couple abandoned a baby with Down's syndrome, a legislator said Friday.
A draft
bill -- which would see anyone profiting off surrogacy given a maximum ten year
prison sentence -- passed its first reading in the country's military-stacked
parliament on Thursday, legislator Wallop Tungkananurak said.
"We
want to put an end to this idea in foreigners' minds that Thailand is a baby
factory," he told AFP.
"The
bill was adopted with overwhelming support."
Commercial
surrogacy was technically banned by Thailand's Medical Council, but until
recently even top fertility clinics were believed to offer the service.
The murky
industry came under intense scrutiny this summer after a series of surrogacy
scandals broke involving foreigners.
In August,
a Thai mother who carried twin babies for an Australian couple accused them of
abandoning a baby boy with Down's syndrome while taking his healthy sister.
The couple
have denied deliberately leaving the boy, called Gammy, with the surrogate
mother -- who was paid around $15,000 to carry the twins.
In a
separate case, police believe a Japanese man fathered at least 15 babies with
surrogate mothers for unknown motives.
A gay
Australian couple were also stopped from leaving Thailand with a baby because
they had incomplete documents.
Thailand's
military junta, which took over in a May coup, vowed to crack down on the
industry.
Dozens,
possibly hundreds, of foreign couples are thought to have been left in limbo
after entering into surrogacy arrangements through clinics in the kingdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment