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Latest Surrogacy News
Japan refuses mother's recognition
request
By AUDREY MCAVOY Friday, June 11, 2004
seattlepi.com
TOKYO -- The Japanese government has rejected a
popular television actress' request that her twin sons -
delivered by a surrogate mother in the United States -
be recognized as her own, the justice minister said
Friday.
Aki Mukai and her husband, former professional
wrestler Nobuhiko Takada, became parents in late
November when an American woman in her 30s gave birth to
the boys.
Mukai, 39, and Takada, 42, applied to their
municipality shortly afterward asking that the babies be
included in their family register. The central
government instructed the municipality in May to refuse
the application, Justice Minister Daizo Ozawa said.
The ministry declined to explain why, citing Mukai's
privacy.
Japanese law doesn't prohibit surrogate births, which
involve removing an egg for fertilization and implanting
it into another woman, who carries the baby until birth.
But the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology sets
ethical standards restricting in-vitro insemination to
married couples and opposing any surrogate births, and
lawmakers want to impose a ban on surrogate births and
penalize those who violate it.
As a result, few Japanese doctors will perform a
surrogate birth, and many childless couples have turned
to fertility clinics in the United States.
Lawmakers in Japan's conservative ruling Liberal
Democratic Party have long opposed most fertility
treatments because they fear legal custody battles and
other possible repercussions for the traditional family
unit.
In 2000, Mukai was pregnant with her first child when
doctors told her she had cervical cancer. She ended the
pregnancy to undergo treatment, and later turned to a
surrogate to carry the couple's children.
If not listed on the family register - an official
document used to prove identity when applying for
schools, jobs and passports in Japan - the twins would
have trouble following through with the most basic
activities of life.
Pro-surrogacy doctors say a ban on surrogate births
would limit the options for many childless couples,
leaving them no choice but to seek fertility treatments
abroad. A ban also would undermine the government's
hopes of reversing the nation's record-low birth rate,
at 1.29 births per woman last year, they say.
In another case, the government ruled in October that
a couple whose twins were born to an American surrogate
couldn't be the biological parents.
Officials later said they would reconsider if the
couple registered the boys as the offspring of the
Japanese man and the American surrogate mother, but the
couple rejected that offer. Japan regards the twins as
American citizens.
Mukai's office said neither the family nor their
spokesman was available for comment.
Kyodo News reported that Mukai issued a statement
expressing frustration that Nozawa told the media about
the decision.
"Should the justice minister be allowed to release
information to the press about a matter so personal as
the relationship between parent and child?" Mukai said,
according to Kyodo. "I don't believe the announcement is
at all in the interest of child welfare."
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