BANGKOK: Thailand plans to end a near-decade old ban on foreigners availing commercial surrogacy services to boost medical tourism, and may allow gay and lesbian couples to have access to the services once the country legalises same-sex marriages later this year.
The Health Ministry is preparing to submit a revision to a law that bans surrogacy for foreigners to parliament as early as July, according to Arkhom Praditsuwan, deputy director-general for the ministry’s Department of Health Services Support. It will be the first amendment since the ban was introduced in 2015 following a public outcry over an Australian couple abandoning a baby born with Down Syndrome.
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