Aggregated News
This year the international spotlight turned with full-force on cross-border commercial surrogacy. The reality of children being born this way and the potentially devastating consequences of babies being abandoned and stateless shocked our collective consciousness.
Such was the case of Baby Gammy, born with Down syndrome and left in Thailand with his surrogate mother by commissioning parents David and Wendy Farnell. His story made the Australian public confront the often-disturbing reality of the international commercial surrogacy industry.
This industry provides on-demand, made-to-order children, allowing commissioning clients to circumvent the often prohibitive laws on commercial surrogacy in their home countries. It is a high-risk, high-stakes transaction for all involved.
Through Baby Gammy and more recently, the situation of a twin-child left in India by Australian commissioning parents (which senior Australian judges have said may amount to child-trafficking), we have witnessed the heightened vulnerability of children born this way.
A problematic practice
When I began working on international surrogacy issues in 2009, there was little public awareness about people from Australasia having children in places such as India and...