Health officials announced yesterday their plan to hold a conference on surrogate motherhood in late August, seeking public consensus that could serve as the foundation for a law governing the controversial practice.

The Cabinet in January 2001 approved a draft of the Artificial Insemination Law which bans surrogacy on moral grounds. The law is still waiting to be approved by the Legislature.

During the past few years many doctors, lawyers, and human rights activists have debated and expressed their opinions on the surrogacy issue but public opinion has never been consulted.

To understand how the Taiwanese people feel about the issue, the Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) of the Cabinet's Department of Health has decided to organize a Surrogate Pregnancy Consensus Conference with a panel of 20 people.

Surrogate mothers carry babies for infertile couples or unmarried persons. They are supposed to give up the babies once they are born.

Surrogacy varies in practice. One practice involves the husband's sperm being artificially inseminated into the surrogate. In this case, the husband would be the biological father while the surrogate would be the biological mother.

Another version is called "host mothering" or "gestational surrogacy" which involves in-vitro fertilization or pre-embryo transfer technique. With this procedure, the surrogate should have no DNA connection to the child.

Under Taiwanese law, a child belongs to the woman who gives birth to him or her. This is a big problem in surrogacy since the surrogate would have the right to refuse to surrender the newborn child.

Another issue is who the responsibility of the child goes to if the intended parents refuse to have him or her after birth.

"We hope the conference will be a great success," said Lin Kuo-ming, assistant professor in sociology at National Taiwan University, who is in charge of arranging the conference.

"Both sides of the surrogacy issue will be debated heavily and we are also hoping that the government would listen to what the people have to say," added Lin.

Lin said that he hopes that the government would take action and hold a referendum on the issue after hearing the discussions from the conference.

The 20 panel members attending the conference would control the topics being debated. BHP plans to invite experts to answer and give explanations to questions and issues brought up at the event.

Anyone interested can apply to become a panel member, and all of the members are required to summarize issues discussed at the five-day conference into a detailed report.

When asked how 20 people would represent the whole Taiwanese population, Lin answered, "The BHP would carefully analyze the applicants' sex, age, education level, living area, and career and do a sampling to choose the 20 people."

He mentioned that accuracy is directly proportional to the number of applicants: the more people who apply for the panel, the more accurate the sample would be.

The panel members are required to be present all five days of the conference. During the first two days, they must take classes and read information papers regarding surrogacy issues.

The BHP plans to compensate for transportation and other expenses for panel members for the five days. The members would also be paid NT$5,000 at the end of the conference.

For application forms or other information about the conference, go to http://tsd.social.ntu.edu.tw or call (02)2363-0231 ext.3553.