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 The gleaming, modern clinics have names featuring words such as
"Miracle" and "Perfect" to help them stand out amid the dusty
surrounding roads and highways in the Lao capital of Vientiane,
close to the Thai border.
"Laos has the best governance. Surrogacy or egg donation is not
illegal!" one clinic, Thai Perfect IVF, said in a recent WeChat post
in Chinese, hoping to attract clients from a country where surrogacy
services have been illegal since 2001.
Rights groups say communist Laos, one of Asia's poorest countries,
is a linchpin of transnational crime, and a transit center for
contraband from drugs and wildlife to timber - and recently, semen.
In April, Thai police arrested a man trying to smuggle six vials of
human semen into Laos in a tank of liquid nitrogen, which police
said was destined for a fertility clinic.
Laos is becoming an international destination for infertile couples,
officials of two surrogacy advisory groups told Reuters, although
there are no official estimates of how many IVF clinics and
surrogacy agencies have sprung up there.
"Many are turning to Laos," said Sam Everingham, global director of
Australian non-profit Families Through Surrogacy, which says its
conferences and advisory sessions have drawn about 600 Australian
couples and singles in the last four years.
But there was a risk that Laos would also ban commercial surrogacy,
he warned, a fear aired in February by another group, the
Nevada-based Sensible Surrogacy, which warned couples to avoid Laos
and halted services in Southeast Asia.
The office of the Laos prime minister did not respond to Reuters
requests for comment by email or through social media site Facebook.
Paid surrogacy is illegal in much of Asia, having been forbidden in
neighboring Thailand in 2015, after a series of high-profile cases,
with Cambodia following suit last year.
Despite the bans, would-be parents are drawn by Asia's lower costs,
as compared to wealthier countries.
Service packages, from the screening of potential surrogates to the
birth of a baby, typically cost $51,150 in Southeast Asia, says
surrogacy agency New Genetics Global, making it the third most
affordable option after Ukraine and Kenya.
An Australian couple can expect to pay around A$75,000 ($56,000) for
a baby through a Laos surrogate - less than in the United States,
though more than Ukraine, Everingham said.
The surrogate mothers receive only a small fraction of that sum, but
it far outstrips what many could earn elsewhere.
One 28-year-old Lao surrogate, who spoke to Reuters on condition of
anonymity, said she was paid $8,000, or 72 times the country's
monthly minimum wage, to carry twins.
She received accommodation in Bangkok, the Thai capital, during her
third trimester of pregnancy, she added.
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BORN IN THAILAND
But few medical centers in Laos are equipped for surrogate births,
particularly the twins often resulting from the multiple embryo
implants used in In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), who are more likely
to be born premature and require specialist care.
"Neonatal intensive care units are only available in neighboring
Thailand," said Everingham, whose group includes two Thai hospitals
and two Vientiane medical centers for surrogate births.
Thailand's ban on surrogacy services followed scandals such as one
in which an Australian couple was accused of abandoning a surrogate
baby born with Down's syndrome.
But it remains a key center for surrogate births, thanks to
sophisticated medical care.
Surrogates who deliver babies in Thailand are not breaking the law,
said Thongchai Keeratihuttayakorn, deputy director of the Department
of Health Service Support.
"If a Lao woman is hired to be a surrogate, but close to the birth
they come to Thailand to deliver, we don't consider this a violation
of Thai law," Thongchai told Reuters, adding that the surrogate must
identify the biological father, however.
"At no time did we carry out surrogacy procedures in Thailand, or
use a Thai surrogate," said Australian Anthony Fisk, whose baby was
born in Bangkok after being implanted in Cambodia prior to the ban
there.
"Our child was born to two foreign nationals in Bangkok, and handled
as such," Fisk told Reuters in an email.
But three Bangkok hospitals contacted by Reuters said they would not
accept surrogate births.
Besides Western couples, the Laos clinics are increasingly eyeing
China, where health officials estimate that 90 million couples have
become eligible to have a second child after a decades-old one-child
policy was relaxed in 2015.
But such couples face tougher odds in getting pregnant, as 60
percent of them include women aged 35 or above, with half of them
over 40.
There are no official estimates of the number of Chinese babies
delivered by surrogates, but media say it exceeds 10,000 every year.
(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat in BANGKOK and Brenda
Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Clarence Fernandez)
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