Surrogacy, Motherhood and baby Gammy

Abstract

The story of baby Gammy, being cared for by his 21-year-old Thai surrogate mother, emerged in late July and has dominated the news since. Mother-of-two Pattaramon Chanbua was offered AU$16,000 to carry a pregnancy for a West Australian couple and subsequently became pregnant with twins. But when one fetus was diagnosed with Down's syndrome, Chanbua was asked (evidence is conflicting as to by whom) to undergo a partial abortion. She refused. The commissioning couple eventually left Thailand with Gammy's twin sister Pipah and he was left behind. Gammy's case illustrates how the international surrogacy industry has been booming, particularly in countries like India and Thailand. This trade is fuelled by a preference for biological parenting over adoptive parenting (though there are now claims that a donor egg was used in this case), the availability and comparatively low cost of surrogacy in developing countries and fewer legal complications compared with making domestic surrogacy arrangements. Additionally, commissioning parents are able to transact the entire arrangement over the internet via an agency, with little or no contact with the surrogate. Indeed, international commercial surrogacy is now so popular that it has overtaken inter-country adoption as a source of babies in the global marketplace. Inter-country adoption has faltered in part due to concerns that emerged over human rights abuses, in particular exploitation of poor women and concerns over conditions and care of adoptees. We now need to question whether the same problem is happening all over again with international surrogacy