Chapter 1 General Principles
Article 1
This Act is enacted for the purpose of fostering the sound development of assisted reproduction, maintaining social ethics and health, and protecting the rights and interests of infertile couples, children conceived through assisted reproduction, and donors.
Article 2
The terms used in this Act are defined as follows:
1. Assisted reproduction: refers to the use of assisted means not involving sexual intercourse to achieve conception and birth with assistance from reproductive medicine.
2. Reproductive cell: refers to sperm and oocytes.
3. Recipient couple: refers to a husband and wife receiving assisted reproduction, where the wife's uterus can carry a fetus and give birth to a child.
4. Embryo: refers to a fertilized oocyte that has undergone division for less than eight weeks.
5. Donor: refers to a person who provides sperm or oocytes for fetal development and birth without compensation to a recipient couple.
6. Cloning: refers to techniques that produce an offspring from a single cell without the union of sperm and oocyte.
7. Mutual donation of sperm and oocytes: refers to an agreement between two identified recipient couples under which both women conceive via the union of sperm provided by the man in one couple and oocytes provided by the woman in the other couple.
8. Assisted reproduction institution: refers to medical care institutions and public interest judicial persons licensed by the competent authority to practice assisted reproduction.
Article 3
The competent authority of this Act is the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Article 4
The competent authority shall call together relevant scholars, specialists, and representatives of private groups to establish an advisory committee, which shall consider the development of social ethics and medicine and maintenance of public health, and deliberate on the status of implementation of this Act on a regular basis.
The number of female members on the committee as prescribed in the preceding paragraph shall not be less than half of all the committee members.
Article 5
This act shall not apply to assisted reproduction where the oocyte and sperm are from the husband and wife, except for Article 16, Subparagraph 3 of this Act and related penal provisions as provided in this Act.