Aggregated News
The government will continue cracking down on surrogacy even though lawmakers recently decided not to pursue a legal ban on the service or trade in sperm and eggs, a senior health official says.
The committee that runs the National People's Congress, the country's legislature, between its full meetings passed a revision of the 2001 Population and Family Planning Law on December 28 that formalized a decision the ruling Communist Party made in October to allow couples to have two children.
The legal amendment, which will come into effect at the beginning of 2016, does not include a clause in a draft revision that made couples paying another woman to bear a child for them illegal.
However, Zhang Chunsheng, a department head at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said surrogacy is still not allowed because of a ban of the service in two central government documents overseeing other infertility treatment technology and sperm banks.
The commission and several other central government agencies are wrapping up a nine-month clampdown on surrogacy at the end of December. The campaign...