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

For libel you have to show damage to reputation, which hadn't happened if you aren't actually named.

Me too, Maryz and Koaladownunder.

There's a fact sheet from the Australian gov on international surrogacy. Reading it... does it not seem that the little girl may not be considered their daughter legally ?

www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/36a_surrogacy.htm

I think this is actually a good outcome for baby Gammy himself. The surrogate loves him and he loves her. The surrogate has been through hell but there is light as money has been raised to help Gammy. He is better off with this lady than the Australians who didn't want him. Poor little girl who has to go and live with those horrid people. She is the biggest loser in all of this.

Yes, as per that fact sheet, it's quite a complex process to get Australian passport & citizenship for a child born to a surrogate overseas.

They may have jumped through enough hoops for the daughter, but that's the thing - you have to prove that either you are the biological parent of the child born to the surrogate, or that the surrogate bore the child with the intention of you becoming it's biological parent (in a case where the bio parents don't contribute the sperm or the egg).

Where in all this, while they were getting the paperwork required to bring the girl baby to Australia, did it not come out that she had a twin? V strange indeed.

The media must be just loving this. :(

but surely if you enter into an agreement with anyone then you are responsible for knowing the legalities of what it is you are entering into? It's just not good enough to say that they went along with what the agency told them - they will have known that they would have had to prove the child was theirs to get a visa for her - so it's just not possible that they have been entirely ignorant throughout.

so what happens if the child is biologically the father's and he doesn't declare the fact that she has been born through a surrogate? Surely then he wouldn't be denied the ability to bring his own biological child into the country?

What happens in the UK if you have a child abroad and then return to the UK with that child? you wouldn't be prevented from bringing it into the country if it is biologically yours surely, in which case is this how people enter into international surrogacy agreements without having to jump through legal hoops?

wannaBe, you are clearly determined to condemn the parents no matter what, which is you prerogative. Just realized that I have been misspelling prerogative for the past 30 years. oops

Others prefer to withhold judgment until they have the facts. It doesn't mean they don't have sympathy for the surrogate. I myself have immense sympathy for the surrogate but I also have a fair amount of sympathy for the parents. I think it is a horrioble situation for everyone.

I maintain the right to withdraw sympathy if it turns out that the father is a pedophile/it's a scam dreamt up by the agency with collusion of the surrogate/some other circumstance that places blame firmly on one of the parties.

In what way is it a horrible situation for the now parents? They have their healthy baby that they got cut price. How is this bad for them?

I can't believe this story. Dreadful. Renting the wombs of poor desperate women is thoroughly repugnant on its own.

The rest of the tale is truly horrifying whatever the truth.

momnipotent if the parents were genuinely never aware of the existence of a twin with ds then in that respect they were deceived by someone. but that doesn't take away from the fact that they saught to enter into a surrogacy agreement with someone in a foreign country where surrogacy for someone who isn't biologically related to you is illegal. I have no doubt that there are agencies who are out there to exploit people who are desparate to have a child, but desperation is not an excuse to exploit women in the poorest of countries - ignorance is not an excuse in the eyes of the law.

As for the language barrier, do people seriously believe that this man spent a month with his daughter in hospital and no-one mentioned to him the fact that the other baby was her twin? And surely there is some moral question over entering into a surrogacy agreement with someone who doesn't even speak your language or you theirs - it's nothing short of renting a womb at best and buying a baby at best with no consideration for the woman - so no, I cannot bring myself to sympathise with them because I think that international surrogacy on this level is abhorrent and anyone who enters into it is morally reprehensible.

Maryz if none of those point are true why would they be at risk of losing their daughter? If they genuinely didn't know about him,which is possible and if other troubling allegations are not true what problem would there be assuming she's being well cared for? Am I missing something?

Or do you mean the legality of the surrogacy? Would that not have come up anyway when registering the child in Australia?

wannaBe, I understand the point about it being an imbalance of power. I take the point of view that desperate people are willing to do desperate things. There are two lots of desperate people in this story - the parents desperately wanting the child and the surrogate wanting the money - they've both done things that I wouldn't do but I am not in their shoes and can't say what I would do if I were.

I presume that if the surrogacy agreement is determined to be illegal that invalidates any "right" that the Australians have to the girl.

Just on the face of it (and I haven't read all 8 pages) I do think decisions in a surrogate pregnancy should be made by the eventual parents, not the surrogate - but then on the other hand it seems she would not have been able to access a safe abortion in Thailand, so there is a very poor woman landed in even worse financial difficulties because of this.

gator decisions around the child should possibly be made by the intended parents, so if they didn't want a baby with downs they should be the ones to liaise with social services in Australia to have the child fostered/adopted. But when it comes to decisions around what a woman should do with her own body no-one has that right apart from the woman. How many threads are there on here from posters whose partners want them to have a termination, and no-one would sanction someone forcing someone else to have a termination under any other circumstances, surrogacy should be no different...

momnipotent I agree that there is desperation on both sides of the coin here, but it still is an imbalance of power in favour of the parents. after all without a market there would be no international surrogacy, or egg donation (another practice where women are often exploited in foreign countries)

But there should be a line in terms of being able to satisfy one's desire for a baby - after all there are unscrupulous agencies who deal in illegal international adoptions where again desparate parents will part with a sometimes much loved child for money because they feel they have no other choice. iirc adoption from Cambodia was stopped for this reason. But no-one would surely condone someone wforknowingly entering into an illegal adoption out of pure desperation for a baby? How is illegal surrogacy any different?

Telegraph are running the paedophile angle now.

wannaBe, I agree, a line needs to be drawn. The real blame IMO opinion lies with the middle men of these deals, the two parties to this deal would never have come together if not for these middle men. I did read that conveniently the agency involved in this deal has gone out of business. I bet they have!

If the father is a paedophile then there could be a whole load of other reasons for him only wanting the female child. Urgh! The whole thing makes me shudder.

I have read on MRA sites, men suggesting that they bypass Westernised women and use surrogates to have babies, so that they can raise them themselves to be 'real men' and 'real women'. The whole thing is a moral sewer, but fundamentally it is never right to exploit someone's poverty and reduce them to their body parts.