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Article

8 Jun 2017

Author:
Roseanne Gerin, Radio Free Asia

Laos: Govt. shuts down clinic suspected of providing illegal surrogacy services; exploitation of women feared

"Lao Health Officials Shut Down Clinic Suspected of Providing Illegal Surrogacy Services", 06 June 2017

Lao officials have ordered a clinic in...Vientiane to shut down amid indications that it is using Thai women to provide illegal surrogacy services to infertile couples, an official from the Lao Ministry of Public Health said.

The move comes amid signs that a commercial surrogacy industry is growing in the small impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

The clinic, which offers “consulting services” to well-off infertile couples and pregnant women, is now being investigated by anti-human trafficking police, he said.

...Relevant bodies could not determine if the clinic...had definitely been providing surrogacy services supplied by Thai women...

Vientiane’s public health department, however, had already reported the problem to the Ministry of Public Health and Ministry of Public Security and passed the case to the anti-human trafficking police, the source said.

Though Laos has no laws or restrictions pertaining to surrogacy services, neighboring Thailand and Cambodia have taken measures to eliminate illegal surrogacy amid growing concern about the exploitation of women who serve as surrogate mothers.

Thailand passed a law in 2015 banning foreigners from hiring Thai women as surrogates after high-profile cases sparked debate the previous year... 

In November 2016, Cambodia banned surrogacy arrangements. But four months later, the foreign ministry said the government was preparing to draft a new law to make surrogacy legal “in order to control and prevent Cambodian children who are born via surrogacy from becoming victims,” according Families Through Surrogacy.

Thai authorities...first became suspicious that the Vientiane clinic was providing cross-border surrogacy services after they arrested a 25-year-old Thai man for smuggling human sperm into Laos in April.

The man confessed that he was crossing the Lao border to deliver six vials of sperm packed inside a nitrogen tank to a clinic in Vientiane...

One of the women told police that she and her husband agreed that she would serve as a surrogate mother in exchange for a U.S. $10,000 payment.