Hong Kong remains conservative on social issues. Advances in human reproductive technology, including greater acceptance of surrogacy, have put this ethos to the test. The law reinforces it by imposing tight controls. But it reckons without the lengths to which infertile couples are prepared to go to get a child, not to mention parenting by singles and same-sex couples. Their numbers are rising. One in six couples is now estimated to suffer infertility. Experts put this down to modern social and environmental factors such as delayed family plans, work stress and the effect of pollution on fertility, which suggests the numbers are far from peaking.
The Human Reproductive Technology Council oversees invitro fertilisation, embryo research and surrogacy. The latter makes the least work for it, but it is the one that causes most controversy and most dramatically highlights the plight of childless couples.
The law bans commercial surrogacy, but not the use of another woman to carry a child without payment of a fee, subject to a doctor's recommendation on behalf of a woman unable to carry. Final approval lies with the council. It probably says something about how high the bar is raised that according to the chairman of the council's ethics committee, Professor Alfred Chan Cheung-ming, not a single case has met enough of the criteria to warrant being submitted to the full council.
However, controversy and cultural attitudes have not deterred an increasing number of Asians generally from turning to overseas agencies for help to conceive a child with a surrogate. Surrogacy Centre Hong Kong estimates that inquiries from Hong Kong have tripled in the past five years and that those from the mainland have quadrupled. Other agencies report a similar trend, including inquiries from Asian entrepreneurs seeking male heirs. The US-based centre matches Asians with American-resident women who, it says, are reimbursed for their expenses but not paid for bearing a child. Commercial surrogacy is not uncommon in the US and elsewhere. Recent high-profile clients of surrogacy services include actor Nicole Kidman and her husband, singer Elton John and his male partner and Peter Lee Ka-kit, who recently presented tycoon Lee Shau-kee with three grandsons from a US surrogacy. Police launched an investigation into whether the arrangement breached Hong Kong law - for example, if any part of it took place here.
Hong Kong lawmakers began discussing outlawing commercial surrogacy before the handover. At that time, a local couple planning a surrogate birth were breaking no law. Newspapers, including this one, editorialised on the ethical dilemma of commercial surrogacy and a range of possible legal and human ramifications in the long term for the child, the surrogate and the biological parents. Thirteen years later, when the case of Peter Lee revived the debate, those same issues were amplified.
It is easy to argue against commercial surrogacy because of the risk of material, physical and psychological exploitation of the poor and their families.