Philippine women arrested for surrogacy in Cambodia sent home

Pardoned by Cambodia’s king, the women were caught up in a racket that put the spotlight back on human trafficking. Three children already born will be given up for adoption in the Philippines if the mothers are unable to care for them.

Manila (AsiaNews) – The children born to three Philippine women charged in October in Cambodia for surrogacy can be given up for adoption if the mothers do not have the economic means to raise them.

The three are part of a group of 13 Philippine women sent home yesterday; the other 10 are pregnant. Another seven who were not pregnant were repatriated soon after their arrest.

At present, the women remain under the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the National Authority for Child Care, who will be in charge of reintegrating them into Philippine society and vetting the possibility of adoption.

At the same time, the women are also valuable sources of information about the surrogacy racket. “If they dare to sue their recruiters, we can be sure that they will be given protection by the government,” said Nicholas Felix Ty, undersecretary in the Philippine Department of Justice.

Accused in Cambodia of violating human trafficking law, the women left the country right after receiving a royal pardon from Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni.

For the Cambodian court, the women had “the intention… to have babies to sell to a third person in exchange for money, which is an act of human trafficking”.

Although illegal in Cambodia, surrogacy remains widely practised in accommodating clinics under the control of local and international rackets that seek to meet a demand that is coming especially from China, where some couples are willing to pay between US$ 40,000 and US$ 100,000 to arrange for a woman to carry their child.

The story of the repatriated Philippine women who risked heavy prison sentences to earn a fraction of what the "clients" paid has put the spotlight back on the risks that Philippine citizens face when they are recruited by the surrogacy mafia. For the Philippine Department of Justice, this is evidenced by recent events in which Philippine authorities were able to identify and stop would-be surrogate mothers before they left and arrest their recruiters.

• philippines
• cambodia
• surrogacy
• human trafficking
• arrests
• repatriation
• royal pardon
• chinese couples