Social media in China is outraged over this illegal surrogacy case

A 22-year-old woman in China shared on social media the story of how she was lured into an illegal surrogacy ring, with disastrous consequences.

Reuters reported that Zhang Jing initially agreed to donate her eggs only out of financial desperation. Later, she said she agreed to “rent out her uterus” and become a surrogate in exchange for a total of 30,000 yuan ($4,152). If she was able to get pregnant and deliver the baby, she would receive 240,000 yuan ($33,193).

While Reuters gave no details, Zhang said she experienced “complications” at five months pregnant, and had an abortion. It’s not known what procedure Zhang underwent or what the complications were, but to be clear, medical interventions like miscarriage treatment are not abortions. An induced abortion is the intentional, direct killing of a human being in the womb. Miscarriage treatment and early delivery with attempts to save the child (even if the child dies as a secondary result of the necessary delivery) is not an intentional attempt to kill the preborn child.

Comments were highly critical of the surrogacy process. “No woman could escape this if surrogacy were legalised,” one person wrote, according to Reuters. Another said, “Legalising surrogacy would drive down prices and commodify women.” A third added, “Life should not be traded as a commodity. If this extends to the sale of organs, it will only get darker and darker, and women will have no future.”

READ: Disturbing story exposes egg donation process for surrogacy agency in China

Disturbing stories about egg donation and illegal surrogacy rings in China have been surfacing more and more lately. Unsurprisingly, this has led to widespread commodification of the children created.

Prices for the surrogacy services range from 550,000 yuan ($77,128) to almost 1 million yuan ($140,024). A salesperson told the investigators for The Paper, a Shanghai-based news outlet, that the agency sees 300 births each year. They also provide other “services,” like customizing the gender of embryos used for IVF. Even worse, if a child is found to have any disabilities at birth, parents can get a refund or start again with a new surrogate; a representative told the investigators that they would “take care of the deformed child.”

Other hospitals are under investigation for producing and selling fake birth certificates to legitimize children who were either kidnapped or born through surrogacy. Parents have also been selling their own children. A 2015 report from Southern Metropolis Daily found that out of 363 cases involving 380 abducted children in China from 2014 to 2015, 40% were sold by their biological parents. “Staff at the hospitals are our acquaintances,” one baby broker said. “As long as they don’t mention the baby is a surrogate child, there should be no problem in applying for household registration.”

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