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 can't believe that people are referring to a female human being as a 'vessel' and suggesting that she has surrendered her right to bodily autonomy. This is what happens to poor women though, isn't it? They lose the right to be seen as human beings and become bodies to be rented out for sex, marriage or pregnancy. They lose the right to refuse consent. It's the ultimate dehumanisation.

People are also ignoring the fact that abortion in Thailand is extremely limited and expensive, and also carries a huge social stigma in a country where women's rights are terrible. Leaving aside her principles and humanity, was this woman meant to risk leaving her children motherless by undergoing an illegal backstreet abortion? We are talking about someone who was obviously desperate enough to end up in this situation as if she had real options.

Some women who have been surrogates have describe themselves as 'vessels' though. Perhaps to distance themselves from the process.

If i could carry a child i would have them regardless of ds.

The Australian couple chose to use a Thai surrogate, despite the fact that abortion is almost always illegal in Thailand. So I don't understand the posters who are saying that becase the surrogate "refused" to have an abortion she should bear responsibility for the baby.

I think this smacks of exploitation of a poor woman by a rich Western couple. The Australians went into it with their eyes open - they would have been able to do background research and gather information on the pros and cons of surrogacy. The Thai woman almost certainly wouldn't be able to do any of that. There is a huge power inbalance.

I think the Australian couple have behaved horrendously. However, I imagine they have seen the process as a business transaction, where the other party has not kept their "side of the bargain". Despicable, and very unsettling.

I feel desperately sorry for the "perfect" daughter they are keeping.

they abandoned him somewhere where he would not receive it.

We cannot say that they did that, because we don't know, FOR SURE!

We do not know what they were told, we only have one side of this & I think it is disgraceful that we can condemn this couple so quickly & so easily when we only know what the surrogate has to say, especially when there was an agency involved as a go-between & we don't know what they told either party.

I for one am holding judgement until & if the couple come forward.

Then I will decide. I think they may be more in the dark than a lot here are giving them credit for, though.

However morally once that child was brought into the world I don't know how they could just abandon him But the whole point is, is that perhaps they are not aware that they 'abandoned' him!

Given that children available for adoption in Australia are like hen's teeth really? I can't find anything other than a newspaper article with stats from Barnardos, but I doubt 40,000 is hen's teeth!

With 40,000 children between the ages of 0 and 17 requiring out of home care in Australia last year (2012), for the first time since 1998-99 more Australian children were adopted than children from overseas. The 70 adoptions by carers represented a 10 year high for this type of adoption – more than double the 29 adoptions in 2002-03. Barnardos finalised 25 adoptions in 2012

Australia do not allow adoption they have fostering for life They do?

Quite clearly alludes to adopting!

Usedtobeapaxmanfan I'm so glad you mentioned that abortion for this reason is not legal in Thailand. I came on to post that I'd read elsewhere that it's very restricted and only allowed in cases where the mum is in danger which WAC not the case here. So to be fair to the surrogate she had little choice but go through with the pregnancy.
The couple should have known the legal position on this or made an effort to find out. They should also have known she was likely to be Buddhist and this could be an issue. There's no excuse for them not knowing this or checking up on it.

I can't condemn them for not feeling they can care for the child though. Parenting is hard and SN parenting can be really tough. I'm an SN parent myself. Not everyone may feel they can give a child what they need. BUT in saying that they had an obligation to the child to put an alternative in place, a care plan with his needs and welfare at heart. It doesn't sound like they did. I hope a way can be found to make them liable financially at least for him. I don't think finance was the issue here they paid extra for a second child so would presumably have supported and accepted that child if it hadn't had DS.

It was touching to see the affection the surrogate showed for this very cute but very vulnerable baby. He deserves her undoubted love and she deserves every scrap of support to help him. Both of them deserved better from the Australian parents.

Given that children available for adoption in Australia are like hen's teeth really? I can't find anything other than a newspaper article with stats from Barnardos, but I doubt 40,000 is hen's teeth!

"With 40,000 children between the ages of 0 and 17 requiring out of home care in Australia last year (2012), for the first time since 1998-99 more Australian children were adopted than children from overseas. The 70 adoptions by carers represented a 10 year high for this type of adoption – more than double the 29 adoptions in 2002-03. Barnardos finalised 25 adoptions in 2012"

What??!

That article you have quoted does not say there are 40,000 children available for adoption in Australia. It says there are that many children requiring out of home care. That would include children who are in, for example, short-term foster care.

The vast majority of children who are being cared for outside of their homes are NOT available for adoption.

Most children in long term foster care are not available for adoption in Australia - the parents have to actively sign their child over for adoption and many of them choose not to, even if they never take care of their child themselves again. It's a bit of a problem here, actually. But then - forced adoptions in the UK are a bit of a problem there too, so who knows which is better. :(

Add message | Report | Message poster Delphiniumsblue Sat 02-Aug-14 22:16:33
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.

not really many families in the uk relinquish their disabled child and actuallly one of the main reasons they give is because it's not fair to their other children Asa disabled children really do require all your attention the other children end up carers or sidelined

You don't know weather the couple have a lot of support and twins are hard at the best of times or even if they have money and you will be aware the 0z health care is very similar to the one in the US you have to pay

It's happened before but a couple refused both of the twins, this has been needling my brain and I finally found it.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-65930/Surrogate-sues-couple-turned-twins.html

It is awful.
Iv read above that the couple said from the moment the baby was known to have Down's syndrome they wanted her to abort .so I guess it was n suprize to her . Awful the situation she is but many people choose to have abortions if they know the baby has downs -need tighter rules for suragacy

The other twin will, I suspect, know. I was a twin though I was only told this as an adult, my twin died at birth. Right through my childhood I felt like something was missing, I had an imaginary twin sister and so on. The Australian twin will perhaps have a similar experience :(

Australian health care is nothing like health care in the US.

I did say that I couldn't find any stats wrt the amount of children awaiting adoptions, but by my reckoning, if 40,000 are needing out of home care, it isn't a huge stretch to think that a large portion of those are awaiting adoption.

Therefore, children waiting to be adopted in Australia is nothing like 'rare as hen's teeth'

IMO.

The couple may or may not have known that they were abandoning a child with special needs who needs life-saving medical care, but they definitely knew that they were exploiting a poor woman's poverty in order to utilise her body as breeding stock. IMO that makes them no better than a punter. Prostitution, mail-order brides, organ harvesting, slavery; we have to stop the poor being reduced to functional body parts.

I don't know all the ins and outs of this story but it sounds like the Australian couple have been very irresponsible. If they felt that strongly that they would terminate a baby with Down's Syndrome then they should have found a surrogate who was willing to do it in a country where it's legal. Very sad situation all round. And this is completely irrelevant, but that baby is gorgeous.

differentname - it is a stretch to think that a large proportion of those are awaiting adoption because they're mostly not. As I said, it's a problem here - many children end up as long term foster children because their parents can't or won't sign the adoption papers and there is no forced adoption here.

if 40,000 are needing out of home care, it isn't a huge stretch to think that a large portion of those are awaiting adoption.

different name, it's a massive stretch. A 'large portion' of them are not awaiting adoption. Hardly any of them are. Mostly because there is an extensive foster system, so it's not a choice between abandoning your child and adopting them out (as it is in some poorer countries).

If you want some statistics, here they are:

www.aihw.gov.au/adoptions/

In 2012-2013, there were 210 Australian children adopted. Of these, 146 were 'known child' adoptions - which means that they were adopted by someone the child already knew (eg a relative).

Which basically means, only 54 Australian children were adopted by strangers.

That's why people go overseas, to countries with a higher birthrate/lower income/lower abortion rate.

differentname Australia does not permit forced adoption so the vast vast majority of those 40 000 children are for long term fostering. The only children available for adoption in Australia are relinquished. Similar to here in the UK relinquished children are very rare.

To use the data you presented above they talk about adoption in their 10's, for a country with a population of over 20 million I would suggest these figures are hens teeth.

However I do not believe this give Austrailian couples the right to exploit poor foreign women.

You don't know weather the couple have a lot of support and twins are hard at the best of times or even if they have money and you will be aware the 0z health care is very similar to the one in the US you have to pay

No, it's not.

It's completely different to the US system and more like the NHS. We have Medicare, which is government-funded medical care. It is a two-tier system, but public hospitals are free, and GP visits/specialists/prescriptions etc. are either free or heavily subsidised if you are under a certain income level.

Why can't Australians just for life foster then? Why does one need to adopt?
Also if you are gonna get children from abroad then why not adopt children from poorer countries rather than surrogacy?

I am not 100% clear on the ethnicity of this child but if one PP is right he is half Asian and half European.

He looks white in the pictures - see the one with the other child, I assume a sibling www.gofundme.com/bxci90

Itsbetterthanabox, I suspect that the answer to the question you posed is that, whether we like it or not, people might want to have a child that is genetically theirs, rather than adopting or fostering an unrelated child.
Or in the case here the couple presumably did until they found out about the disability.

Itsbetterthanabox, I suspect that the answer to the question you posed is that, whether we like it or not, people might want to have a child that is genetically theirs, rather than adopting or fostering an unrelated child.
Or in the case here the couple presumably did until they found out about the disability.

I think baby gammy will be very well looked after.

That fund raising page is very active and I feel if it wasn't such a shocking story then it wouldn't have been in the news.

The Australian couple should be very ashamed of themselves, how can they look at their daughter every day knowing they are keeping the biggest secret from her.