Ex-TPP chairman urges passage of bill to assist reproduction

Taipei, Jan. 2 (CNA) Ko Wen‑je (柯文哲), the former chairman of the opposition Taiwan People's Party (TPP), visited lawmakers of different parties Friday to push for the passage of an amendment to the Assisted Reproduction Act to assist reproduction.

It was the first time that Ko, also a former Taipei mayor, appeared at the Legislative Yuan since being released on NT$70 million (US$2.3 million) bail in September 2025 in a corruption case.

He had been detained since September 2024 for allegations that he accepted bribes related to the Core Pacific City development project in 2022 during his tenure as Taipei mayor and embezzled political donations during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Speaking with reporters, Ko said amending the Assisted Reproduction Act would benefit the public, and it would be inappropriate for political parties to fight each other over the bill and "oppose it simply for the sake of opposing it."

"I'm here to persuade the (ruling) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the (opposition) Kuomintang (KMT) to support the amendment to the Act" Ko said. "The act does not involve ideology. It's for the public's good."

In December, the DPP Cabinet unveiled an amendment to the Act, aiming to extend access to assisted reproduction from infertile heterosexual couples to single women and married lesbian couples.

Under the proposals drafted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, single women and lesbian couples would be granted access to assisted reproductive technology (ART).

Another proposal by TPP lawmaker Chen Gao-tzu (陳昭姿), a doctor-turn politician, that she has pushed for since early 2024 would include a surrogate mother mechanism, but the DPP has opposed the idea, causing Chen to bash it for putting politics above public welfare.

As Chen is a TPP legislator at large and will soon have to step down after serving in the role for two years based on party rules, Ko showed up at the Legislative Yuan to seek support for Chen before her term ends.

Political impasse

Ko said that after his release, he had read court documents every day for oral arguments in the bribery case hearing in the Taipei District Court, but now that the court debate has ended, he had time to visit political parties and urge them to pass Chen's amendment.

The former Taipei mayor, who maintained he was innocent during his case's trial, is scheduled to receive a verdict on March 26.

When asked to comment on the confrontation between the ruling and opposition camps, Ko applied the Chinese saying "three feet of ice does not form in a single day" to describe the situation.

Ko said President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) should bear most of the responsibility for the current deadlock as he was the most powerful man in the country and should change his mindset to ease the impasse.