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View Full Version : Help save Gammy, abandoned surrogate baby who is very ill.



Tony Rex
August 1st, 2014, 07:33 AM
This is what happens if human beings are only commodity.

Australian couple abandons Down syndrome baby with surrogate, took only his healthy sister. Full story: https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/24607119/australian-couple-abandons-down-syndrome-baby-with-surrogate/

Hope for Gammy, fundraising site with his latest news update: http://www.gofundme.com/bxci90

Help pass the word. Thanks geeks.

Crazyorange
August 1st, 2014, 08:19 AM
I can't believe someone would reject their own flesh and blood just because they are not "perfect". So sad. Will the Australian government go after the couple?

Tony Rex
August 1st, 2014, 09:41 AM
Despite the local outrage, I don't think the Australian government can do anything about it. Our overseas adoption regulations are tight enough already, mucking about with them would probably hurt genuine adopting parents. OTOH, the Thai government, or India, the Philippines etc. ought to tighten their rules. Because this wasn't exactly the first one, there have been many similar cases went unreported.


Earlier his year, there were 65 babies stuck in Thailand that were conceived by gay Israeli couples and birthed by surrogate Thai women, the Times of Israel said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2712562/Australian-couple-abandon-six-month-old-Down-syndrome-baby-poverty-Thai-surrogate-mother-healthy-twin-sister.html#ixzz399fUGmSt

Shimmershadow
August 1st, 2014, 12:40 PM
/profanity alert



What. The. Fuck. Humanity.

mmahany
August 1st, 2014, 04:26 PM
It's very easy to say what they did was awful and cruel, but my understanding (having worked with many families who do have children with disabilities) is that you ultimately have to devote the rest of your life (or the child's I suppose) to caring for them. That's a life burden many people aren't strong enough to bear.


I personally can't pass judgement because I have no idea what I would do in their situation. If you any of you do in fact have children with severe disabilities, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. If you don't, I think it's unfair what many of you said.

Crazyorange
August 1st, 2014, 08:04 PM
I work in the fertility business. There are options, like having the embryos tested for genetic problems. Makes me wonder why didn't this couple take the step to see the health of the embryos? I've had a family member on my ex in law side with Down syndrome. Yes, it's hard for the family. But she was a wonderful part of the family and was greatly loved by all around her. I wonder about all things you can't see like depression, autism, bi polar, addiction to drugs - other issues a "healthy" child can have that will put pressure on a family. These issues can't be seen.

The thing about the story that bothers me....to know you have a child alive but leave it behind. Sorry, but they knew the child was going to born and not make proper arrangements for him is sad.

Tony Rex
August 1st, 2014, 10:58 PM
@mmahany

No worries. If you can't spare judgement, maybe spare a coin or two? Because this is more like a lending ahand thread than passing judgement one. If 'life's a burden' then imagine this little tot's burden from the get go.

Some say, "We're entitled to quality of life" ...

While others "I'm just happy to be alive".

Shimmershadow
August 4th, 2014, 07:33 AM
I just cannot imagine the thinking, the selfish, selfish thinking that these parents had to have. Not only did they have twins who will now more than likely be forever separated, but they just left Gammy behind with the surrogate. Did they think she got into the surrogacy market because she had tons of extra cash lying around to care for an ill child? I understand that having a child with a disability is daunting at the least, and can be a tremendously heartbreaking and awful experience. However, this is not the way to deal with that. Children are a lottery--you can work the odds a little, but you get the kids that you get, be they healthy or unwell, visibly or invisibly.

I wonder that the contract with the surrogacy company wasn't a little tighter, in the event of something like this happening. It's not eBay, you can't send you baby back for a refund because it was not as described. And while the article says that the parents knew that the baby would have Downs Syndrome and that the surrogate would not abort...don'tcha think this should have been talked about beforehand? Some kind of contingency plan put in place to prevent this very situation?

Also, this is a surrogacy case, not an adoption one. The Australian and Thai governments may have recourse after all. Bless the surrogate mother for taking on this task and caring for this baby.

Crazyorange
August 4th, 2014, 08:26 AM
Well said shimmershadow.

Bogon07
August 4th, 2014, 05:24 PM
I suspect there are many more details to come out of this.
Already we are hearing conflicting stories from the parents and the surrogate. I don't think we've the doctors or agency versions yet either.
The whole thing seems a moral and legal mess. I just hope it turns out well for those involved.


The Thai surrogate mother of a baby boy born with Down syndrome and a hole in his heart says his Australian biological parents saw him in hospital.Twenty-one-year-old Pattaramon Chanbua's account contradicts the claim of the couple from Western Australia, who have said they were not told about the baby boy’s existence (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-04/wa-couple-denies-they-abandoned-baby-gammy/5644850).
"If they don't know about the twin then they wouldn't be crying the day that they took the girl out from the hospital [and home to Australia]," Ms Chanbua told the ABC's 7.30 program.
"They probably would not have asked me to have an abortion, if they truly don't know [about the twin with Down syndrome]."
Ms Chanbua has told the ABC she gave birth to twins after agreeing to be a surrogate for the Australian couple, with a promised payment of about $16,000.
She claims the couple, who have not been identified, rejected Gammy and returned to Australia with his healthy sister.
She says her doctors, the surrogacy agency and the baby's parents all knew he was disabled four months into the pregnancy, but did not inform her until the seventh month when the agency asked her - at the parents' request - to abort the disabled foetus.
She told the ABC she refused the couple's request to terminate the pregnancy because in Thai culture it was considered sinful, but she could not afford Gammy's medical treatment.

Shimmershadow
August 4th, 2014, 07:11 PM
I don't know that I'm buying the story that the surrogate was asked to abort at seven months. Wouldn't a procedure like that endanger the twin?
I do agree with Bogon07, there is probably more to this story that we haven't heard yet, and I'm not 100% sure that anyone is entirely innocent in it except for the children. Something tells me there is a very unethical financial component of some sort in here that we're not yet aware of.

scrivelry
August 4th, 2014, 08:29 PM
Replying to the thread as a whole: I agree that we have not heard all. Moreover, based on newspaper stories of things I actually know about first hand, newspapers hardly ever get it all correct anyway, so it must all be take with a grain of salt.

Complicating the situation is that there are language barriers here. You have people who do not all speak the same native language and a situation with lots of subtleties that are hard enough to comprehend when you DO have the same native language. You have a profit motive on the part of the surrogate company, you have something of a profit motive on the part of the surrogate, but also the surrogate is in a perfect situation to be exploited - poor, young, presumably not much education - and you have a profit motive on the part of the parents - they want a child, that will be their profit from the transaction.

What concerns me more than the specific case are the attitudes, some clearly expressed in this thread, some attributed to the parents, some in the articles, that somehow people are entitled to healthy children, that children who have an identifiable problem should be destroyed before birth, that caring for a child with a disability is some kind of horrible sentence that people should not have to undergo.

Sh!t happens. But it can happen at any time. You can have a perfectly healthy baby and trip and fall the day you bring the baby home and suddenly the baby is not so perfectly healthy anymore. Or maybe that child will end up abused by parents or other adults, or have, as has been pointed out, some problem which you don't see (yet) in tests given during pregnancy.

Moreover, you don't know what someone's outcome is going to be. One of my friends, when a child, had a brain scan that prompted a neurologist to ask her mother if she was trainable or educable. Her mother replied that she was, at the moment of that conversation, in a special class for gifted students... Also, many things, Downs among them, have not only a broad range of expression, but can be mitigated to greater or lesser extents by the treatment a child receives. So you don't know, when you hold that child in your arms, everything the future is going to bring for it, under any circumstances, and if you think you do you are fooling yourself.

If any parent expects a perfect baby, on what basis are the expecting it? Their own perfection? If this article/thread was the first place I'd ever heard any of this I don't know what I would be thinking, but I consistently run into human beings who think they can judge the worth of another human being's life by what ends up being some sort of commercial standard. I personally reject that premise. This case is one example that's been brought to our attention, but the idea that other people exist only to serve our own needs is all around us and can be seen in every form of media, daily, and it is never a pretty sight.

tiffanyhenschel
August 4th, 2014, 09:46 PM
I don't know that I'm buying the story that the surrogate was asked to abort at seven months. Wouldn't a procedure like that endanger the twin?
I do agree with Bogon07, there is probably more to this story that we haven't heard yet, and I'm not 100% sure that anyone is entirely innocent in it except for the children. Something tells me there is a very unethical financial component of some sort in here that we're not yet aware of.

Morality and ethics aside, the whole arrangement appears to be illegal. From the news story linked in the OP:

"According to Fairfax, Ms Pattharamon was forced to lie to an official of the Australian embassy in Bangkok so that the Australian couple was allowed to leave the country with the baby.

In Thailand, surrogacy arrangements commissioned by unmarried couples or couples whose marriages are not recognised in Thailand are illegal.

Any arrangement involving the exchange of money to carry the unborn child is also illegal, Fairfax reports."

Additionally, foreigners must request permission from Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs before permanently moving a child from its mother to another country or they will violate the country's human trafficking laws.

Tony Rex
August 5th, 2014, 12:34 AM
Indeed, there's more to it to this story...


An allegation of a child-indecency conviction against the Australian father in the baby surrogacy furore has prompted Gammy's mother to demand his sister be returned to her in Thailand.
Channel Nine has reported that the West Australian man was in 1998 convicted of an indecent act involving a child under 13 and has served a prison term. The report claims his wife knows of the conviction.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/report-that-father-of-surrogate-baby-gammy-has-child-indecency-conviction-20140805-100g5b.html#ixzz39Uqk6ZJ0