Hun Daneth felt that, counted on that.

When she gave birth to the boy, who didn't look like her, she knew it even more.

But four years after acting as a surrogate for a Chinese businessman, who said he had used a Russian egg donor, Ms Hun Daneth is being forced by the Cambodian courts to raise the little boy or risk going to jail.

The businessman is in prison over the surrogacy; his appeal was denied in June.

Even as she dealt with the shock of raising the baby, Ms Hun Daneth dutifully changed his diapers.

Over the months and years, she found herself hugging and kissing him, cajoling him to eat more rice so he could grow big and strong. She has come to see this child as her own.

"I love him so much," said Ms Hun Daneth, who is looking after the boy with her husband.

The fates of a Cambodian woman, a Chinese man and the boy who binds them together reflect the intricate ethical dilemmas posed by the global surrogacy industry.

The practice is legal — and often prohibitively expensive — in some countries, while others have outlawed it.

Still, other nations with weak legal systems, like Cambodia, have allowed grey markets to operate, endangering those involved when political conditions suddenly shift and criminal cases follow.

When carried out transparently with safeguards in place, supporters say, commercial surrogacy allows people to expand their families while fairly compensating the women who give birth to the children.

Done badly, the process can lead to the abuse of vulnerable people, whether the surrogates or the intended parents.

The practice flourishes in the nebulous space between those who can and cannot bear children; between those with the means to hire someone to bear their biological offspring and the women who need the money; and between those whose sexuality or marital status means they can't adopt or otherwise become parents and those whose fertility spares them having to face such restrictions.

Though she never intended to raise the boy, Ms Hun Daneth has come to see him as her own. "I love him so much," she said.

As the industry flourished, the government imposed a ban on surrogacy, promising to pass legislation officially outlawing it.

The ill-defined injunction, imposed in a graft-ridden country with little rule of law, ended up punishing the very women the government had vowed to safeguard.

In 2018, Ms Hun Daneth was one of about 30 surrogates, all pregnant, who were nabbed in a police raid on an upmarket housing complex in Phnom Penh. Although Cambodia to this day has no law specifically limiting surrogacy, the government criminalized the practice by using existing laws against human trafficking, an offence that can carry a 20-year sentence. Dozens of surrogates have been arrested and accused of trafficking the babies they birthed.

In a poor country long used as a playground by foreign predators — paedophiles, sex tourists, factory bosses, antique smugglers and, yes, human traffickers — the Cambodian authorities said they were on the lookout for exploitation.

"Surrogacy means women are willing to sell babies, and that counts as trafficking," said Chou Bun Eng, a secretary of state at the ministry of interior and vice chair of the national countertrafficking committee.

"We do not want Cambodia to be known as a place that produces babies to buy."

But applying a human trafficking law to surrogacy has imposed the heaviest costs on the surrogates themselves.

Nearly all of those arrested in the 2018 raid gave birth while imprisoned in a military hospital; some chained to their beds.

They, along with several surrogacy agency employees, were convicted of trafficking the babies.

Their sentencings, two years later, came with a condition: In exchange for suspended prison terms, the surrogates would have to raise the children themselves. If the women secretly tried to deliver the children to the intended parents, the judge warned, they would be sent to prison for many years.

This means that women whose financial precarity led them to surrogacy are now struggling with one more mouth to feed.

From behind the bars of a courthouse in Phnom Penh, Xu Wenjun, the intended father of the boy to whom Ms Hun Daneth gave birth, spoke quickly, his words tumbling out before the police intervened. He has been in prison for three years.

"My son must be big by now," said Mr Xu, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit.

"Do you think he remembers me?" Continue reading

Governor Andrew Cuomo's bill has already passed the state Senate.

However the bill is stalled in the state Assembly (which is the other 'half' of the state Legislature). This is because of strong opposition, particularly from female legislators.

If passed, the law would allow state residents to pay a woman to carry to term a child conceived through in-vitro fertilisation. A surrogate mother would not be allowed to use her own eggs - which would make her biologically related to the child. This is known as traditional surrogacy.

While the bill has been presented as "an unequivocal progressive ideal, a remedy to a ban that burdens gay and infertile couples and stigmatises women who cannot have children on their own," it has run up against strong opposition.

Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, who is openly gay, says commercial surrogacy "is called 'pregnancy for a fee'.

"I find that commodification of women troubling."

In a similar vein Dennis Poust, director of communications for the New York State Catholic Conference, says "Like those [secular feminist] groups, we stand up against the exploitation and dehumanisation of women.

"This bill treats women almost like livestock at the service of men."

Poust says the bill was comparable to one that seeks to legalise prostitution in that both ... lead to the exploitation of poor women, largely for the benefit of wealthy men.

"The one commodifies babies, the other sex, and always the victims are poor women," he says.

"In commercial surrogacy, women's human dignity is surrendered and they are reduced to objects desirable only for their body parts, whether that be the rental of their wombs or the mining of their eggs in risky, invasive medical procedures.

"The beneficiaries are nearly always wealthy and often male, while the exploited are always poor women."

Feminist speaker, author, and activist Gloria Steinem wrote an open letter about the state legislating a "profit-driven reproductive surrogacy industry.

"Under this bill, women in economic need become commercialised vessels for rent, and the foetuses they carry become the property of others," the letter says.

"The bill ignores the socio-economic and racial inequalities of the reproductive commercial surrogacy industry, and puts disenfranchised women at the financial and emotional mercy of wealthier and more privileged individuals."

Steinem's letter points out surrogate mothers are often college-age women who are victims "of an educational system that does not provide free or affordable college education.

"These women are often given fertility drugs without being warned of the possible side effects," and the women face other medical and psychological injuries from the procedure, "including an inability to bear other children, and even death".

She says another factor against the bill is its failure to provide measures to vet intended parents - unlike adoptive parents, who are thoroughly vetted.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Image: Standard Media