The Future of Wombs for Rent

When Thailand’s parliament passed a law banning most forms of surrogacy late last month, its main motivations were clear. Last year, two major scandals brought to a head long-standing concerns that Thailand wasn’t doing enough to protect the women hired to bear children for other people and the children born through surrogacy. Last July, Thai media reported that an Australian couple had hired a Thai surrogate to bear twins but abandoned one of the babies — a boy — because he had Down syndrome and a congenital heart problem. International media quickly confirmed the couple had left “Baby Gammy” with his surrogate mother and took his healthy sister back to Australia, sparking widespread outrage.

The second scandal materialized less than a month later, when reports emerged that a 24-year-old Japanese man, Mitsutoki Shigeta, had paid at least 11 women in Thailand through multiple surrogacy agencies to deliver at least 16 babies. His goal, he told the worried staff of one agency, was to father 10 children per year well into old age. The director of the concerned...