In the news this weekend is the heart-rending story of the gay Kiwi couple fighting to take home from Mexico their triplings: babies born to different surrogate mothers with the same egg and sperm donor. The tale of corruption and confusion is, sadly, far from being a common one in the area of surrogacy. Its fraught with difficulty and with moral and legal issues.
Who can forget the Israeli government chartering a 747 just after the Nepalese earthquake last year to evacuate from the rubble the surrogate babies…but not the mothers. Or the couple who came to collect their surrogate twins in Thailand, only to leave the Downs Syndrome twin behind as being ‘not fit for purpose’. The lack of any unity in the regulations across countries, and even states, makes the whole area a real minefield. A number of countries are now outlawing the practice altogether while they review the regulatory structures that are needed.
I wish this couple the very best in raising funds and taking their beautiful family home.
Friends of the couple set up crowd-funding page to help pay for hospital fees and travel to obtain passports so they can leave Mexico. The couple need funds because one of the babies had medical complications after birth and required hospital care costing the couple NZ$118,132 (£56,000).
'The problem now is that they are stranded in this third-world country with little or no finances left and another month or so of bureaucracy to get through, she wrote.
The couple have spent four years saving to pay for bringing the children into the world and their adoption agency has abandoned them.
The family are in Mexico and unable to leave because they reportedly cannot finance a 800km journey in order to obtain passports for the children and undergo DNA testing to prove parentage.
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