When I saw this picture for the first time – just a glimpse, only a fraction of a second -– before I read the text and started to understand that these women in beautifully serene simple dresses, like a group belonging to a religious order, were actually a group of 13 women from the Philippines who had been arrested in Cambodia, condemned to be jailed for being surrogate mothers, but finally pardoned and sent back to the Philippines

I saw this, but the more I thought about it and collected related information, the less I could understand it.

OK, they were surrogate mothers who were convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for violating Cambodian’s anti-human trafficking laws. Who violates a law has to face punishment! But what is “Surrogacy”?

Wikipedia, the free-content Internet online encyclopedia, says:

“Surrogacy is an arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to pregnancy and childbirth on behalf of (an)other person(s) who will become the child’s legal parent(s) after birth. People pursue surrogacy for a variety of reasons such as infertility, dangers or undesirable factors of pregnancy, or when pregnancy is a medical impossibility.”

“Surrogate mothers… are usually required to participate in processes of insemination (no matter traditional or IVF), pregnancy, delivery, and newborn feeding early after birth.”“IVF is a process of fertilization in which an egg is combined with sperm in vitro (“in a glass”). The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman’s ovulatory process, then removing an egg or eggs from her ovaries and enabling a man’s sperm to fertilize them in a culture medium in a laboratory. After a fertilized egg undergoes embryo culture for 2–6 days, it is transferred by catheter into the uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy.”

In addition to such medical information, there are also legal concerns. Again, Wikipedia says:

“The legal aspects of surrogacy in any particular jurisdiction tend to hinge on a few central questions:
• Are surrogacy agreements enforceable, void, or prohibited? Does it make a difference whether the gestational carrier is paid (commercial) or simply reimbursed for expenses (altruistic)?
• What, if any, difference does it make whether the surrogacy is traditional or gestational surrogacy?
• Is there an alternative to post-birth adoption for the recognition of the intended parents as the legal parents, either before or after the birth?
Laws differ widely from one jurisdiction to another.”

Were all these aspects considered in the case of these 13 women victims? I did some research on the Cambodian situation and found that the KHMER TIMES had reported already in April 2020: “A long overdue law on surrogacy will finally be enacted this year since it was drafted in 2017.” And there were clear reasons for it (not for the delay!): the law aims “at ending a lucrative business that is linked to human trafficking, targeting women from low-income families.”

But still two years later, in April 2022, the KHMER TIMES reported

“The Kingdom is working to rectify a draft law on surrogacy with more input from stakeholders relating to human trafficking issues before putting it into use. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs spokeswoman Sar Sinet said yesterday that the Ministry is preparing a taskforce to discuss with legal teams from a number of ministries to rectify the draft law on surrogacy. According to the spokeswoman, the law on surrogacy is being drafted by the Ministry in cooperation with legal experts from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Interior and work on the law started in 2016.

“Chou Bun Eng, Secretary of State at the Interior Ministry and vice-chairwoman of the National Committee for Counter Trafficking, said that the law was created to defend surrogate mothers who agree to bear the child for another person. She said that to date, the child has been identified as the victim as it is sold from one person to another and the fate of the child is not known. This is considered human trafficking.“According to the National Committee for Counter Trafficking, currently Cambodia is becoming a place for illegal surrogacy activity. The law was drafted following the arrest of three people for surrogacy offenses in 2016.”

I am not sure when it was finally adopted, but the 13 women were sentenced on 2nd December 2024 to four years in prison for their involvement in surrogacy, and charged with attempted “selling, buying or exchanging of human beings for cross-border transfer. Therefore, the women who carry out surrogacy to deliver babies for sale are classed as criminals under the Kingdom’s laws,” added the spokesperson.

After studying the issue for many years, it was clear that these women are criminals – but I have been looking for any reference to the men in all related reports, who were involved in initiating these pregnancies – in whatever way, in medical processes of insemination, or just in other ways of impregnating these women, who seem to be, at the end, the only criminals. The law had been said to be “created to defend surrogate mothers who agree to bear the child for another person” – at the end of this process to define by law what is right and what is wrong, these women are pardoned criminal victims.

Did nobody else do anything wrong? Does the surrogacy law apply only to women? Why was the role of men not made part of the law – what to research, and whom to punish, if the law is violated? Will the law be revised?