Scaling the Wall
About this Event
Childbearing and marriage remain tightly coupled in many East Asian societies, even as marriage is increasingly delayed or forgone. This coupling is shaped not only by persistent social assumptions but also by legal definitions of what constitutes a family. Law plays a twofold role in family formation. First, it defines what marriage, parentage, and family should be, erecting a wall that leaves non-marital and non-heterosexual families outside its protection. Second, it restricts access to the means of forming a family, preventing those outside the wall from scaling it. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, Taiwan offers a compelling case for examining how this legal wall has begun to crack and how it might be further transformed. In 2019, the legal recognition of same-sex marriage opened a small door, allowing individuals in same-sex marriages to adopt their spouses’ biological children. Subsequent advocacy for broader recognition of diverse families led to the extension of joint and successive adoption to married same-sex couples in 2023. However, because the law restricts access to assisted reproductive technology (ART) to married heterosexual couples, many same-sex couples have traveled abroad to have children through IVF or surrogacy. The costs of cross-border reproduction, together with uncertainty surrounding the legal recognition of the resulting parent–child relationships, have intensified demands to expand domestic access to ART to same-sex couples. These demands have also created an opening for single women and unmarried couples to challenge their exclusion from equal access to ART. This presentation examines how ART law constitutes a barrier to the formation of non-marital and non-heterosexual families, and how ongoing debates over ART law reform have become a battleground for efforts to decouple childbearing from heterosexual marriage, both socially and legally.
Dr. Hsiao-Wei Kuan (Penn Carey Law, LLM'03, SJD'08) is Professor of Law at National Taipei University. She is currently a Visiting Scholar in the East Asian Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School and a Fulbright Senior Scholar for the 2026–2027 academic year. Her research and teaching focus on socio-legal studies, human rights, law and social movements, gender, sexuality and law, anti-discrimination law, and health policy. She has published extensively on legal mobilization, reproductive rights, CEDAW implementation, and LGBT rights in Taiwan.
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