The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito plan to submit a bill for special provisions of the Civil Code concerning the relationship between parents and children conceived by donated eggs and sperm.
The two parties are asking opposition parties to jointly submit the bill, to be done at an extraordinary Diet session to be convened on Oct. 26, with the aim of having it approved before the end of the Diet session as a nonpartisan effort.
The main pillar of the bill is to clarify as a special provision in the Civil Code that, when a baby is born through fertility treatment using an egg donated by a third party, the woman who actually gives birth to the baby shall be considered the child's mother.
The bill also includes a provision that, when a wife, with her husband's consent, gets pregnant through fertility treatment using sperm not produced by the husband, the husband cannot deny that the child is his.
Currently, the Civil Code does not have provisions hypothesizing fertility treatment involving a non-spousal third party. On the other hand, it is estimated that among children born through such treatment, there are over 10,000 conceived using donated sperm alone. This has led to disputes regarding parent-child relationships.
The bill will have an additional clause for pending issues to be addressed. These include whether to grant children conceived using eggs or sperm donated by a third parties the "right to know their lineage" by obtaining information on their genetic parents (donors), as well as rules regarding those acting as intermediaries in the process.
Since 2013, the LDP has been working on an assisted reproduction technologies bill that would conditionally allow egg and sperm donations and surrogate births. However, as the party has been slow to build a consensus, it put priority on the special provisions bill being discussed concurrently, and reached agreement with Komeito on joint submission.
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