BioEdge, By Jared Yee: While Americans have long gone to China to adopt children, Chinese couples are now travelling to US surrogacy clinics because it is illegal in their home country. China’s growing affluence has also made it easier for Chinese couples to relocate for surrogacy services. California is a popular destination, due to its high Chinese population and its courts’ liberal attitude to surrogacy. Jerry Zhu and Grace Sun, from Beijing, have now saved US$60,000 toward the $100,000 they predict the surrogacy birth will cost. They want to go to Los Angeles later this year for the procedure. “It's going to be expensive,” said Zhu, a furniture factory manager. “But if we have a child it will complete the family. We are hoping for a son.” Zhu and Sun, like most couples, hope for gestational surrogacy, a procedure where an embryo – produced with the woman’s egg and the man’s sperm – is implanted into the surrogate mother who will bear the child. According to clinic directors, gestational surrogacy costs between $80,000 and $120,000, with higher costs if complications occur or repeated implants are needed. The price then leaps about $30,000 if the prospective mother’s eggs are not viable. In these cases, clinics usually procure eggs from donor clinics. A Caucasian woman can usually get $5,000 to $8,000 for 10 to 14 eggs, according to Dr Jeffrey Steinberg of the Fertility Institutes in Encino. An ethnic Chinese woman – whose eggs are more attractive to Chinese couples for cultural reasons – can be paid up to $15,000 and higher for her eggs, Steinberg says. Source: BioEdge
