More Heart-Wrenching Chapters in the Baby Gammy Story
Headlines around the world have broadcast the heart-wrenching story of the Australian couple who took home their healthy baby daughter and left her twin brother with his Thai surrogate mother after learning that he had Down syndrome. Thousands of news articles have been written since the news was first reported last week, and conflicting versions of what happened have not yet been fully resolved. By all accounts, the story of baby Gammy has gotten more shocking every day.
After several days of media attention, the Australian commissioning parents were identified. Shortly thereafter, court documents were discovered revealing that the babies’ father has been convicted of 22 child sex offences in Australia, including offenses against a girl who was seven years old and two more under thirteen.
And now, the couple seems to have vanished. Child protection services tried to find them without luck, and their dog was taken away from their empty house by animal protection officers.
Apparently no formal contract was ever signed between the commissioning parents, the surrogacy agency, and Pattaramon Chanbua, the woman they paid to carry and deliver their babies. The head of the unidentified Bangkok fertility clinic could now face jail time. More shockingly, 21–year-old Chanbua, who has been caring for Gammy since he was born, could also face jail time for her involvement with commercial surrogacy, despite claiming that she never knew commercial surrogacy is illegal in Thailand because she saw so many websites offering it online.
Thankfully, Gammy is in good hands for now. More than $230,000 has been raised via GoFundMe by the organization Hands Across the Water for the life-saving health care Chanbua would not have been able to afford on her own.
If there is any silver lining in this heart-wrenching debacle, it is that it is now clearer than ever that regulation and oversight of cross-border surrogacy is sorely needed to prevent more cases of neglect and harm to women and children.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: