Four Corners: Sept 22

Next Monday Four Corners is promising the full story of ‘Baby Gammy’, told from his mother’s point of view and the issues surrounding commercial surrogacy.

It took just one phone call from a Thai journalist to expose the plight of ‘Baby Gammy’ and to send shockwaves through the Thai surrogacy industry. But it wasn’t just people in Thailand who felt the impact. Some Australians found themselves with newborn babies that they couldn’t take home.

This week, Four Corners reporter Debbie Whitmont is there as one of these families tries desperately to find a way out of the situation. As she tells the story of this couple and their twins, she also takes us inside an industry that has grown with little effective regulation, leaving it exposed to unscrupulous agents.

She talks to the intending parents, the agents who act as go-betweens in this booming business and importantly she tells the stories of the women who carry the children in return for payment. For the first time, we hear the full story of ‘Baby Gammy’, told from his mother’s point of view.

This report highlights the emotional impact the surrogacy business has on young women. As one agent concedes:

“This is not like any other business in the world. I just couldn’t even call it a business. Because it is a lot of emotion. It’s not only about money, it starts from emotion.”

It’s easy enough to pass judgement on surrogacy businesses in Thailand. However, it’s also clear the industry there has developed for two very simple reasons. One involves the law. In Australia it is illegal to pay someone to be a surrogate parent. In effect, Australia has exported the problem and the ethical and moral dilemmas that go with it. The second is money. Even if surrogacy was allowed here, it could be done more cheaply in Thailand.

For many would-be parents, this is a major blessing. For human rights experts, this is an intolerable situation:

“I think it’s probably wise for us to go back to the reasons why we have uniformly prohibited surrogacy on a commercial basis throughout Australia .My feeling is that exploitation is an almost inevitable side-effect of commercial surrogacy.”

The case of ‘Baby Gammy’ might serve as a cautionary tale of the complications of treating babies as commodities, but it has also forced authorities to confront a major problem. For human rights experts, and a judge familiar with this area of law, there has to be change from the top:

“If commercial surrogacy is allowed with proper regulation in Australia to protect the rights of all parties, then we should simply have a law which prevents children born of surrogacy arrangements elsewhere being brought back to Australia.”

That might help minimise the risks to children and surrogates, but it would be a major challenge for government.

Monday 22nd September at 8.30pm on ABC.