Thai editorial: When babies become a business

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EDITORIAL
When babies become a business
The Nation

Thailand is crying out for proper rules to govern surrogacy

BANGKOK: -- The fate that has befallen baby Gammy reveals a gaping hole in Thailand's policy on surrogacy and the urgent need for action to prevent more children suffering.

Shock and outrage greeted the disclosure by 21-year-old surrogate mother Pattaramon Chanbua that she had been left to take care of the baby after the Australian couple set to become his parents discovered the child had Down's syndrome and a life-threatening heart condition.

Pattaramon, a street-food vendor from Chon Buri, had accepted an offer of Bt300,000 from an agent to be a surrogate mother for the Australian couple. The deal was meant to be a solution for financial difficulties Pattaramon and her family were suffering.

She and her husband agreed to the surrogacy, and a fertilised egg was implanted in her womb. Three months later Pattaramon realised she was carrying twins, for which the agent promised to give her an additional Bt50,000.

What should have been great news for all parties was complicated a month later with the discovery that one foetus had Down's syndrome. The Australian parents were informed and responded by asking Pattaramon to have an abortion. The young mother refused, citing her belief that to do so would be a sin.

When the babies were born, the agent took the healthy girl and left the boy. Pattaramon has never met the couple who were supposed to be mother and father to the boy.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, one thing is certain: Gammy is an innocent victim. And whatever the circumstances of his birth, he has full rights to life and care. Pattaramon has a moral obligation to take care of him since she took on the responsibility for carrying the child. Despite her financial troubles, she must now find money for his medical treatment. Luckily, a charity in Australia has stepped in to raise funds for Gammy, though that money will run out someday.

The lesson here is that morality alone is an inadequate way of handling surrogacy, which has become a commercial business that needs to be properly policed. Pattaramon is not the first surrogate mother to have been left "holding the baby". In fact, dozens of babies born to Thai surrogates in the past year reportedly remain in Thailand due to legal problems faced by their foreign parents.

Some call the mothers greedy for agreeing to carry another's child for money, but the high demand from couples around the world (and even in Thailand), offers many young women a way out of poverty. And giving life is no sin, according to Thai Buddhist belief.

Surrogacy is legal in Thailand, but only if a married couple ask a blood relative to carry their baby. Whether those rules should be relaxed has been a point of discussion among the Thai medical profession for years.

Pattaramon's experience should be treated as a test case for Thai society in the quest to find a proper way to handle the issue of surrogacy. It is the time to think about creating clear rules to govern what has become a baby business in Thailand.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/When-babies-become-a-business-30240202.html

[thenation]2014-08-05[/thenation]

[NongKhaiKid]

The original situation is becoming so confused as the BBC are reporting an unnamed couple in Western Australia are admitting they have a daughter who was carried by a surrogate mother in Thailand but she doesn't have a twin and that the story surrounding Gammy is ' tragic '.

 

Maybe Chooka can fill in some of the blanks.

 

Apart from clarifying the overall legal aspect the truth or otherwise of Gammy's story needs to be cleared up.

[Roadman]

There seems to be more and more conflicting details coming out about this case. Now according to this item the surrogate mother never met the parents. And I see on a Kiwi website the father has been outed as a past kiddie fiddler.

Jeez bloody hell...and sitting right in the middle of this mess is an agent with a priority for money. No guess as to where most of the issue is especially trying to produce what should be credible evidence of a moral system especially where surrogacy and the protection of all parties is concerned. Yet more evidence of thai incompetence and corruption that has been exploited for ... money. One can understand the needs and wants of both surrogate and parents but the process in the middle and those managing mis managing it need sorted so that if surrogacy is an option whether one agreees with it morally or not, then all concerned are aware of their responsibilities in a transparent process before something turns to custard.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Roadman

[Bender]

this story, remember somehow, another one few years ago. Abortion is illegal in thailand, and one day they did discover that a temple in

bkk was "offering" -for thousandS of baht-  this illegal practise. They did found a couple of thousands of baby foetus.... yeah all thai are clean, innocent, nice..... and really hypocrite

Edited August 5, 2014 by Bender

[noitom]

The article in this Thai news states that the Thai surrogacy trade needs to be "properly policed." Can you imagine the idea of properly policing anything in Thailand?

[utkb]

There seem to be two issues to this story 1) Surrogacy and 2) Down's syndrome abortions. 

 

I recently took my wife to Bumrungrad for a 16 week scan.  We had already done the Nuchal Trans Thickness test showing normal results, but my wife brought up the secondary screening with the obgyn.  The Dr's response was that nearly all Thai couples would do the test and abort the down's baby (legal?) if the test indicated a high probability of Down's syndrome. I have no idea of what normally is done in Western cultures, but luckily I have been spared from having this conversation with my wife.

 

My sympathies to the victims in this story the child and the surrogate mother, and disgust with the original couple.

 

[Benmart]

The article in this Thai news states that the Thai surrogacy trade needs to be "properly policed." Can you imagine the idea of properly policing anything in Thailand?

Yes, I can.

[Thai at Heart]

Thailand is crying out for proper rules to govern ..........Everything.


Surrogacy barely works in a country of legal and moral principal. Write all the rules u like but with corruption and no enforcement this is the result .

[belg]

this is the 4th news article about the same ?

[hyperdimension]

 

surrogacy, which has become a commercial business

So has selling stories to mass media and raising "charity" money from the hysteria.

 

How much has been raised so far? 220k AUD?