Another surrogacy nightmare

Agreed absolutely.

Oh! And the reason for the photo/size discrepancy in the timeline is that the babies were born on the 1st September and the couple arrived on the 5th of September and Edward stayed there until the 13th October before exhausting hope heading back to Ireland (not sure if husband Patrick came back sooner, presumably only one of them has a right to adoptive/paternity leave beyond the first few weeks?).

So the girls are 6 weeks old in that photo.
I feel so sad for them, and worried for their mother, as if the agency are shaking down the couple for extra cash, I doubt the women they hire are treated with much respect.

A triplet pregnancy is so hard on the body, too.

@NicLondon1 ."There is a whole community of surrogates who do make a living from this and enjoy it."

No one is making a 'living' from surrogacy... in the UK, they are entitled to get 'reasonable expenses'.. and even if they were popping out a baby every year of their working life for €50,000 ... they would not be doing so under the banner of informed consent because to do so would be extremely detrimental to their own health.. not to mention... biologically unlikely to be sustainable.

Yes this is exactly what I think. Possible exceptions are - your sister / cousin / good friend offers. But in general, no, they should adopt or remain childless. Men do not have the right to rent women's bodied in my opinion.

I agree.

Yes, I'm against all surrogacy. HTH

If he's the biological father and on the birth certificate why would he need to adopt them?

The Irish public love stuff like this. They will surpass that 30k goal. Sadly a lot of irish society see nothing wrong with what's happening here.

Those poor poor babies. I hope their mother is ok, worryingly a lack of any mention of her health having birthed triplets. The whole story makes me feel ill. As does surrogacy of any kind.

My personal view is that my husband is just as much of a parent as I am, if he happened to be gay and I couldn't bear him a child, I wouldn't begrudge him having a surrogate,

Well if he was gay you wouldn't be his wife but you would happily carry a child and hand it over to your gay husband at birth?
Why is your gay husband entitled to rent a woman and buy a baby? What give him that right?

Personal choice is an illusion when you are poor and disempowered and there are predatory agencies pressuring you into carrying babies for wealthy foreigners. The entire business is corrupt and immoral.

It's like saying you should be able to sell yourself into slavery if you want to. The personal choice is irrelevant; the practice of slavery is repugnant.

I see no difference in morality between paying money to buy a adult or child and paying money to buy a baby.

Also, in my own opinion it is a woman's personal choice if she wishes to rent her uterus to help people out, but of course not everybody will agree on that.
Differing views are what makes the world go around. Peace x

More of an extortion type thing, I think?
That the hospital bills keep going up, the couple have no legal standing, and the agency have tried to demand more and more for their own part in it (the agency fees are rising for seemingly for no legitimate reason, although obviously the hospital costs genuinely do rise with every passing day).

The couple seem to think it was a flat fee arrangement and they were fully paid up before they arrived to collect, whether that’s what was sold to them by the agency or if they just didn’t notice the small print* I can’t tell.

*I say small print but there doesn’t appear to be any paperwork beyond emails.

@Brokendaughter I do have children actually, and one was born extremely prematurely, which is perhaps why I was moved to donate.
But thank you for explaining your views.

My personal view is that my husband is just as much of a parent as I am, if he happened to be gay and I couldn't bear him a child, I wouldn't begrudge him having a surrogate, to continue his DNA so to speak.
My gay friends will make wonderful fathers and their child would never be an accessory, of that I'm sure. It will be very much wanted and loved. They tried to find a free surrogate but couldn't. I know they found an egg donor who gave all their personal information so they can continue to be involved as the child grows up, she is not anonymous.

The whole situation with scamming and exploiting women is tragic and I agree with all the issues @TheClogLady has raised.

Yes this is exactly what I think. Possible exceptions are - your sister / cousin / good friend offers. But in general, no, they should adopt or remain childless. Men do not have the right to rent women's bodied in my opinion.

You’re right. It’s not the action of anyone who should be described as ‘sweet’.

It’s a horrible mess and these two men have been utterly stupid, motivated by their own selfishness and compounded by naivety.

And the fall out is four damaged females, the mother and these three wee girls.

The second half of the interview is with a solicitor who does surrogacy and international adoption and while she can’t comment on this case she is saying that normally you would need a solicitor in each country, whereas this couple have just paid an agency and hoped for the best.

More like online shopping than adoption.

Oh my, this guy has already managed to raise €15k of a €30k target on Gofundme!

What’s going to happen to the children? If the men who intended to purchase them have been scammed (what’s the nature of the scam? Is it a shakedown or are the babies not even their genetic offspring?) are they going to be sold to other buyers? Or will they eventually be handed over even if the men can’t pay? This is so horrific.

Sorry Clog but ignorance is no excuse. These men knowingly looked for the cheapest option to buy a baby. They didn't even bother to do their research they just wanted the cheapest sale they could find. I dont think that action makes a man sweet.

I dont disagree with you that the agency has scammed them or that the real losers in this are the 3 baby girls with no family to love them who exist only because men from another country bought them.

Yes, I am saying that no-one should be able to buy a baby or buy the use of another human'd body to grow them a baby. If that leaves adoption or remaining childless, so be it.

The act of taking a new born from its mother (and yes the surrogate mother is the mother, she is the only mother the baby knows, regardless of whose egg) is abhorrent. We don't do that to puppies. We don't do it to non-surrogate babies except in extreme cases of child endangerment because we know the damage it does to the child. The child should always, always be the priority. But apparently as soon as money changes hands it's ok to take a newborn baby away from the mother who has grown and birthed it, despite the fact that the baby is barely capable of realising it is a separate entity to the mother. It is cruel and inhumane.

oops, I meant to reply to @Clymene !

If you have a look at the links I posted up thread there is a video narrated by the same journalist and a companion piece that’s more about the surrogate mothers.

In the Hard Talk article, there is a little audio player that has an interview with Edward.

They’ve definitely been scammed. The agency has seen them as an easy mark (perhaps because they are gay and that makes it harder for them to seek legal assistance in Kenya). Edward admits they were naive but they were under the impression that they paid the agency and the agency paid the hospital, the doctors, the paperwork etc.

They’ve gone to collect the babies to find the agency asking for more, then disappearing on them, and the doctors and hospital saying there are bills to be paid (bills that are continuing to accumulate)

Edward comes across as a sweet man who had absolutely no idea as to how terrible surrogacy can be, especially international surrogacy. They seem to have picked Kenya because it was the cheapest option on Google.

I find him far more likeable than every other gay surrogacy case we’ve discussed on here (admittedly very, very low bar!) and he seems genuinely distraught and repeatedly reiterates that he has no one to blame but himself, nonetheless he still went into this thinking that buying babies was easy and harmless and I’m halfway through listening and the mother who birthed these little girls doesn’t seem to be in his thoughts at all.

This story clearly demonstrates that predatory foreign agencies exist solely for money making and that no safeguarding of women or babies takes place.

The Kenyan courts are rightly dubious about adoptions and birth orders for babies born in this way and the adoption process seems pretty arduous (and it’s possible those birth certificates they paid an extra 3 grand for are fraudulent).
Technically homosexual couples cannot adopt in Kenya (and single parents have multiple restrictions too). This might be resolvable via DNA tests and the Irish government helping with the paperwork (although obvs that could open up a frightening future loophole).

Those poor little girls, no one to cuddle them but hospital staff. I hope they are allowed to sleep together, at least.

www.newstalk.com/news/im-terrified-for-my-girls-safety-irish-father-of-triplets-born-in-kenya-1394106

This!

I’m pleased someone else thought that, no incubators, no oxygen , no mysterious “wires”, just three quite plump and well covered babies who frankly do not look like premature triplets.

Well he’s called one of them Renesmee for a start

Yeah, everyone else has pretty much covered what I was going to say in response to @NicLondon1