According to Henan TV station @ City Report: An informed source reported to reporters that doctors at top-tier hospitals colluded with surrogacy agencies to conduct illegal procedures such as egg extraction and implantation in underground laboratories, charging 1,500 yuan per operation and 2,000 yuan for anesthetists each time. Some girls have already “donated eggs” seventeen or eighteen times.
This issue has sparked heated discussions among internet users and has surged onto the national trending list.
On August 26, the Qingdao Municipal Health Committee released a statement:
In response to online claims about a certain biological company’s involvement in surrogacy in Qingdao, our committee immediately formed a joint investigation team with the police and market regulation departments to investigate and verify the related situation. Once verified, strict legal action will be taken.
Surrogacy, commonly known as “borrowing a womb,” refers to the act of a woman accepting a commission from others to give birth to a child through artificial reproductive methods. In our country, surrogacy is explicitly prohibited. This means that regardless of whether it’s the paying client, the intermediaries profiting from it, or the surrogate herself, all are engaging in illegal activities.
Surrogacy “moss” ads Image source: Daily Economic News
Some may feel that as long as both parties are willing and there is a genuine need, surrogacy should be allowed. In fact, the issue of surrogacy is not that simple; it brings a series of problems including legal issues, ethical dilemmas, and foremost among them is the health of women.
Excessive egg extraction can endanger life
A woman typically only produces about 400 to 500 mature eggs in her lifetime, a limited quantity. Over the course of a year, with normal ovulation, this amounts to just twelve mature eggs in total.
It’s important to note that in regular assisted reproductive procedures, hospitals typically only extract 8 to 10 eggs, and never more than 15.
However, illegal egg-selling organizations completely disregard women’s health, extracting as many as four or fifty eggs at once, which is a “predatory” method of egg extraction!
To extract multiple mature eggs at once, these illegal organizations usually overuse ovulation induction drugs, causing the egg donors to experience ovarian cyst enlargement, abdominal fluid accumulation, pleural effusion, edema, hypercoagulability leading to thrombosis, and renal failure… This condition is medically known as Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), which can be life-threatening in severe cases.
Moreover, legal egg extraction procedures must be conducted in a sterile, dust-free (low dust), temperature and humidity-controlled environment to prevent infection. All instruments must be strictly sterilized, and the egg donor must be fully anesthetized, with the anesthetist monitoring throughout the procedure.
How could illegal organizations meet those requirements? Unlawful and unregulated egg extraction operations increase the risk of severe bleeding and postoperative infections.
Additionally, the egg retrieval needle is not an ordinary needle; it is 2mm wide and 35cm long.
Image source: Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University
This long hollow needle is required for “insertion-re-entry into the pelvic cavity-finally piercing the ovary,” then going into the follicles to suction out follicular fluid and extract the egg cells.
When a larger number of eggs are taken, the internal wounds left in the ovaries can be numerous; extracting 20 eggs can leave 8 to 10 wounds.
“Suffering” happens more than once, leading to endless problems
Ruan Xiangyan, director of the endocrinology department at Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital affiliated with Capital Medical University, stated that even if a fertilized egg naturally implants inside the body, it may still fail and result in a miscarriage due to some inherent or external factors, and artificial cultivation also cannot guarantee 100% success.
The success rate of embryo cultivation is about 50% on average, greatly correlated with the quality of the eggs. If embryo cultivation fails, eggs must be retrieved again at a later date, causing the egg donor to “suffer” again.
Furthermore, to meet clients’ demands for “guaranteed boy births,” surrogate mothers may face repeated abortions until they conceive a boy. Continuous abortions can lead to uterine perforation, postoperative infections, cervical or uterine adhesion, and infertility, even resulting in severe bleeding that threatens life.
Surrogate mothers without legal protection
The rights of surrogate parties as stipulated in surrogacy contracts are not protected by law; if the fetus stops developing during pregnancy or if there’s an unexpected miscarriage requiring termination, the surrogate faces health risks and also does not receive the agreed payment.
For example, if the born child…
