Chinese Couples Coming to U.S. for Surrogates

Usually when I think about babies and China, it’s Americans adopting Chinese babies, but there’s a bit of role reversal ensuing. Since surrogacy is illegal (not to mention socially stigmatized) in China, more and more wealthy Chinese couples are coming to the United States for surrogate mothers. Though there aren’t any official numbers, surrogacy clinics say that Chinese couples coming for surrogacy services has jumped tremendously in the last few years. Ideally, most of these couples are hoping for gestational surrogacy (embryo using egg and sperm from the parent couple, not from a donor, that is planted into surrogate), which they can have for the not-so-tawdry sum of $80-120,000. And when gestational surrogacy’s not possible, these Chinese parent-hopefuls prefer Asian eggs (raising their demand and cost). [h/t Koji]