Ministry shuns surrogate babies
The Asahi Shimbun and wire reports October 24, 2003

The Justice Ministry has rejected an application by a Japanese couple to register their twin babies, born to a surrogate mother in the United States, ministry officials said Thursday.

The infants, denied Japanese citizenship, live in Japan as Americans, they said.

Under Japanese civil law, a woman can only be recognized as a baby's mother when she gives birth to the child.

The children were born in autumn last year in California. The sperm from the husband was used for in-vitro fertilization involving eggs donated by an American woman, according to the officials.

Fertilized eggs were implanted in the womb of the surrogate mother, a different American woman.

The twins have a blood relationship with the Japanese father, but not the Japanese mother. Surrogate motherhood is illegal in Japan.

According to officials, the couple applied to register the children without informing bureaucrats of the nature of the births.

The ministry held up the application, suspecting the woman, in her 50s, was too old to give birth, leaving the parent-child relationship in doubt.

Subsequent examination found the twins were born from an American surrogate mother and therefore not eligible for recognition as the Japanese couple's children, according to officials.

There have been other reported cases in which infertile Japanese couples sought surrogate mothers in the United States.

In these cases, if a couple applied to register a child without informing authorities of the facts of the birth, the application would most likely be accepted without scrutiny-depending upon the mother's age.

It is suspected there have already been cases in which children born through surrogate mothers have been entered in family registers as legitimate children of the couples.

In the case in question, the ministry only uncovered the details this past summer from the text of a California court ruling required for the children's birth certificates.

The children can obtain Japanese nationality through adoption by the couple.

But it is unlikely they will be registered as the couple's own by blood.

Proposed legislation on parent-child relationship in cases of fertility treatment, now under study by the Legislative Council, will likely recognize actual motherhood only when the mother gives birth.