Aggregated News
For the Australian couple Stephen and Michael, having kids involved people from five different countries. Australian law forbids anyone from contracting surrogates or paying women to have children for them, but Stephen and Michael knew other gay couples who’d found a workaround: In developing nations, laxer rules and bigger loopholes would allow them to hire a surrogate abroad. (Because the actions the fathers took are now considered illegal, the fathers’ names have been changed to protect their and their children’s identities.)
They’d heard that Nepal was a “safe and easy” option, and a place where surrogacy agencies from western countries with equally strict surrogacy laws had recently set up shop. So Stephen found Tammuz, an Israeli agency, which would help the couple have a child for $35,000. The sum would cover all expenses: the agent’s fee, the cost of the medical procedures like in-vitro fertilization, the surrogate’s medical expenses, and her take-home pay, which the Australians were told was $10,000.
The woman who would carry their child had been working as a maid in India, according to Stephen. Like he...