Surrogate baby left in India by Australian couple was not trafficked, investigation finds
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Version 0 of 1. Details have emerged of an investigation into the case of an Australian couple abandoning one of their twins born to a surrogate in India in 2012. Diplomats in Delhi asked the Australian federal police to investigate child welfare concerns and the possibility the child might have been trafficked. The investigation found the twin left in India was not trafficked. But diplomats were concerned that the unwanted child, left with Indian friends who wanted a baby, may have been stranded without official parents or citizenship of either country. The Australian high commission in Delhi was approached by the couple – identified in a summary of the case by the then department of immigration and citizenship as Mr and Mrs S – who said they had come to India to meet their twin biological children born through international surrogacy arrangements. The couple allegedly decided they wanted to take only one baby, a daughter, back to Australia, saying they could not afford to support both children. Mr and Mrs S told consular staff they had left the unwanted baby with friends who could not have a baby. It was unclear whether money changed hands. Diplomats in Delhi asked the AFP to investigate child welfare concerns and the possibility the child might have been trafficked. There is no suggestion consular staff did anything wrong. The chief justice of the family court, Diana Bryant, has called for a national inquiry into commercial surrogacy after highlighting the case in an ad hoc addition to her keynote address at the National Family Law Conference in Sydney on Wednesday. The officials felt conflicted about providing a visa to the couple’s chosen baby but pressured by the Australian government to provide one, Bryant alleges. The former foreign ministers Bob Carr and Kevin Rudd have said they do not recall the case. On Thursday Tony Abbott acknowledged the case was “a subject of considerable public interest” but said the government did not have much detail about what had occurred. “It’s always distressing to think that a child has been brought into the world and then abandoned,” the prime minister said. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, told reporters at a press conference in Melbourne he would be open to an inquiry. A leading Australian surrogacy lawyer, Stephen Page, said he was “horrified” by the story. “It is unacceptable for anyone to give up a child in this way,” Page said. “We don’t know how often cases like this are occurring, but what this case and the case of baby Gammy have shown is that these stories come out sooner or later because people are shocked by it and they will talk about it.” Page said a strong framework of international law was needed to regulate commercial surrogacy and should be developed from a human rights and feminist perspective, with strong judicial oversight. Despite commercial surrogacy arrangements being illegal in most states and territories within Australia, no Australian had been prosecuted, Page said. “It’s a law that’s been put in place for purely symbolic reasons as it is clearly not enforced,” he said. But problems about international commercial surrogacy arrangements were highlighted more than a year ago in a report by the Australian Family Law Centre. The report discussed the case of another couple, known as Mr and Mrs P. Mr P entered into a surrogacy arrangement that resulted in twin girls who he claimed were intended to have been his biological children using donor eggs. But DNA test results showed no biological tie to him, and investigations by the clinic where the embryos were created were unable to determine how the error occurred or who the biological parent was. The Australian high commission could not determine whether it was a genuine error on the part of the clinic or if the children had been conceived with donor sperm intentionally. The clinic had no procedures in place to prevent such an error occurring, the report found. On Wednesday, the chief judge of the federal circuit court, John Pascoe, said a sharp rise in the number of Australians entering into international commercial surrogacy arrangements had raised human rights issues. “Despite the disharmony and evident failure of prohibitive commercial surrogacy laws, there seems little legislative interest in remedying the situation,” said Pascoe, speaking at the law conference. “Put bluntly, the question that must be answered is, ‘Are babies commodities to be planted and harvested?’ “This is a question that must be addressed by parliament with reference to the empirical research and considered free from popular or emotive misunderstandings. “In my view, we need a proper national inquiry so that all Australians have an opportunity to consider the issues raised by commercial surrogacy and how it may best be used whilst protecting the rights and interests of vulnerable women and children.” The Australian Greens spokeswoman for legal affairs, Senator Penny Wright, said a number of allegations, including the details of the baby Gammy case, made the need for an inquiry urgent. “Surrogacy is an area where the law has clearly failed to keep up with practice,” Wright said. “Australia’s surrogacy laws vary greatly from state to state and we need to be looking at whether our local laws are pushing up demand for international surrogacy.” |