To think if you pay for a surrogate baby that you decide you don't want you should pay for the op he needs.

[sashh]

An Australian couple have paid a Thai woman to be a surrogate, she had twins but one has Down Syndrome so they left him behind and took his sister home.

He has a hole in the heart (news reporting that it is in addition to DS, actually it is more likely part of the DS) and his mum can't afford his op.

Surely the least you can do is pay for his bloomin' op?

Obviously there should have been an agreement with who pays for what under what circumstances but in reality is a poor person in a developing country going to think about that?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28617912

www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-01/mother-of-thai-baby-abandoned-by-surrogate-parents-struggles-to/5642478

I'm not sure now Phaedra, my dd is 15 and back in those days PR wasn't automatic with being named on the birth cert, I'd imagine now that DNA testing could be requested by the intended father?

As a further complication, if the surrogate is married, the baby is legally her husbands unless he refuses to give consent to the treatment ...
Luckily mine was divorced!

www.gov.uk/legal-rights-when-using-surrogates-and-donors/overview

I am not 100% clear on the ethnicity of this child but if one PP is right he is half Asian and half European. That gives another reason why it would be very hard to be raised in Asia - hard enough as it is in a majority European country to be mixed race, it's harder in countries where most such children are the product of temporary (at best) or commercial (at worst) liaisons - unless there is a white father around

The best case scenario for this child, given the intended parents were not interested in raising him, would be adoption or fostering in Australia. Given that children available for adoption in Australia are like hen's teeth, he'd have a wide range of parents more than willing to adopt him.

Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant

Although it could always be displaced.

poster drspouse. Australia do not allow adoption they have fostering for life

I mean they don't allow domestic adoption

This is why I refused to be tested when pregnant, I knew I would love any child that was born. It is a good job too, as I late found out there was some health issues that never would have shown up.

Add message | Report | Message poster BridgettRousselot Sat 02-Aug-14 20:40:23
This is why I refused to be tested when pregnant, I knew I would love any child that was born. It is a good job too, as I late found out there was some health issues that never would have shown up.

But not everyone is the same I am an adopter and not everyone can love a child that is not bio theirs not very one could love or even cope with a disabled child

I don't think we are in the 'reluctant father scenario' at all.
The surrogate is in effect providing a safe environment for an embryo to grow and develop. She isn't the mother with all the affective bonds that can build up. As such her involvement on what is right to do or not should be minimal unless this also affects her own health.

The issue there is the fact that this woman strongly believed absorption was the wrong thing to do and that child should have the right to live. Fair enough. But if she is making that choice, then she is acting like a mother rather than like a 'vessel' and therefore she should be the one to deal with the consequences of it ie a life time of caring for a child with SN.
She can't claim at the same time to have the same rights to decide what to do with the baby because it's her body and refuse any responsibility because it's not her child and she was just 'renting' her uterus.

Fwiw in the reluctant father example, if the father didn't want a child or a child with SN and decides to leave the relationship, the most he will be asked for is a financial contribution until the child is 18yo. He will never be asked to see the child it be part if his life. Telling these parents that they 'have to have the child' is like telling that reluctant father that he has to have the child to live with him 24/7 wo any involvement of the mother, even though she was the one to take the decision.

I haven't said he has to take the child. I have said he cannot however evade financial responsibility. Isn't it the case that in many jurisdictions that responsibility might not end at 18 for a dependant adult child?

Formally involved, who goes on to become a reluctant Father can evade financial responsibility and often second wives aid this, so they gain financially over in our case disabled children.

It's possible that the financial responsibility doesn't stop at 18yo. But I would suggest that in that case the financial responsibility is appropriate to the country and I would struggle to see how you could then ask the bio parents to pay for surgery etc.

That woman did what was right to her own principles. Which is completely understandable. The problem is that the bio parents do not share these beliefs. Was it right for the surrogate to impose these beliefs to the parents or fir the parents to impose them on her? Neither if them are acceptable. That should have been discussed before anything went ahead, seen the cultural differences.

Add message | Report | Message poster PhaedraIsMyName Sat 02-Aug-14 20:52:09
I haven't said he has to take the child. I have said he cannot however evade financial responsibility. Isn't it the case that in many jurisdictions that responsibility might not end at 18 for a dependant adult child?

yes they can just like the law allowes my ex to pay exactly nothing to my child he will say he. Didn't want him but the says it's fine just like many fathers around the world who pay fuck all to there children they have amoral duty but not a legal one

MNy things in this life are moral questions just like it's not moral to sleep with your best friends husband but people do it's not legal but not quite right.

*would you expect a mother who put her child in to foster carer because their disabled to pay maintenance to the foster carer

In any other context people on here would never berate anyone for not being able to cope with a disabled child

I fostered many children whose parents couldn't cope because the child was disabled should the sate chase these parents for payment

Australia do not allow adoption they have fostering for life

I thought they allowed it in cases of relinquishment? Or only in some states?

Anyway, either way, the boy could have a loving permanent family and adequate medical treatment if relinquished by the intended parents.

But who actually are the patents now? I mean legally? The Australian coue or the surrogate mother? I'm getting the feeling that she is but everyone expects the bio parents to be because they genetically are the parents.

The surrogate is/would be under UK laws!

That's why I said "intended parents". Before birth, in a surrogacy arrangement, they are only intended parents.

Although clearly the surrogate now feels she is the mother who knows what is best for her child, and I can see how she would feel that. But as many here seem to think, the genetic parents (who are also the intended parents, this isn't always the case) should have some responsibility, even if it's mainly financial.

That's what I though.
So this child is now living in Thailand with his mother (not dissimilar to what would happen if the child has been born from and egg and sperm donor) but we would like the people who are genetically related to the child to pay for medical expenses etc.

But would you so think that a sperm donor or an egg donor has a responsibility toward the child??

The main thing this case has highlighted is how complicated things are.
Having worked with couples with difficulty conceiving, I don't know any of then who would have taken the decision of an abortion lightly seeing how hard it was for them to conceive in the first place.

Egg and sperm donors are not intended parents - they have no intention of becoming parents. Those who commission a surrogate are intended parents.

But who actually are the patents now?

According to a Thai surrogacy site the surrogate and her husband, unless they are unmarried (as in civil marriage as well as religious marriage, it used to be quite common for people to just do the religous side) in which case the surrogate alone.

How those parents can do that is beyond me. Im a twin. My sister died when we were young. Though it happened when we were young and ididnt realise till i was a young child iv always felt a part of me was missing.

I doubt the Australians have thought it through. They will have a baby for a very short time- they will have a lifetime with an older DD who judges them- which she will.

In my opinion the surrogate did not do anything wrong. Surrogacy is illegal in Thailand, suggesting a proper contract between surrogate and Australian couple was never made. And why would a couple specifically get a surrogate from somewhere it is illegal, unless they had something to gain, for example being able to pay well under the norm for the surrogacy. By choosing a surrogate from Thailand, they should have known that the religion, Buddhism, would prohibit abortion.
The way I see it, besides all the issues of the fact the couple abandoned their own child, they completely took advantage of a poor, young woman.
I have a lot of respect for the surrogate, she is only 21 years old, with 2 children to feed, struggling for money, yet she has taken on the abandoned child...shame on the couple who left their child