The Science Council of Japan's "Committee on the State of Assisted Reproduction Medicine",
considering the pros and cons of surrogate motherhood finalized its final report at a
meeting on 7 March 2008. (See BJ
March 2008)
The report makes the following five recommendations, among others.
- For the time being, surrogacy is banned in principle. A new law, entitled "Law on Regulating
Assisted Repromed" (tentative title), should be written in order to entrust regulation to the law.
- Trial implementations (clinical trials) will be approved in exceptions and under strict management.
- It will be necessary to establish a public management organization for clinical trials in order
to carry out the work of registration, follow-up studies, evaluation, and so on in an appropriate
manner. Trials can then be implemented on this basis for a certain time. If there are no especial
medical or ethical issues remaining at the end of that period, then the ban on surrogacy should be
totally lifted, but with certain guidelines.
- For-profit surrogacy should be subject to severe penalties, persons liable to penalties at
present being the agent or mediator, the client, and the medical practitioner.
- Concerning the parent-child relationship, the "birth mother is the mother" rule should be applied
to surrogacy, implementation overseas and clinical trials being treated likewise.
There are still plenty of tasks to be completed: the enactment of legislation, the establishment and
management of a public body to take charge of clinical trials, and so on, but the
basic conclusion has been reached with one year and two months of discussion.