Law Banning Commercial Surrogacy Takes Effect Thursday

A new law banning commercial surrogacy takes effect July 30 even as controversy continues to swirl around children born before the law was passed this winter.

Public Health and Social Development and Human Security ministry officials announced Thursday's enforcement of the Protection of Children Born from Assisted Reproductive Technologies Act, which was adoptedin February and published in the Royal Gazette May 1.

The legislation was spurred by an Australian couple who were accused of abandoning a baby with Down's Syndrome carried by a Thai surrogate while taking his healthy twin sister. A second high-profile surrogacy controversy erupted when nine babies fathered by a Japanese man using Thai surrogate mothers were discovered in a Bangkok apartment.

Ministry officials said Wednesday that the new law is intended to help married, childless couples have their own children using reproductive technologies and prevent the abuse of such technologies.

A significant change in the law gives biological parents of a child born via surrogacy immediate parental rights in line with family and inheritance laws, Public Health Minister Rajata Rajatanavin said. Under the existing statute, a...