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June 2nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Illustration: Simon Bosch.
AUSTRALIAN couples are paying huge amounts to overseas surrogates to fulfil their dreams of having a family, some risking jail in doing so, fuelling calls for surrogacy laws in Australia to be overhauled.
New figures indicate the number of Australian couples travelling overseas – to India, the United States, Thailand and Canada – to have children through surrogacy has tripled in three years. Most of the couples enter commercial surrogacy deals – typically worth between $50,000 and $150,000 – that would be illegal in Australia.
According to Surrogacy Australia, a Melbourne-based advocacy group for parents using surrogacy, a survey of 14 surrogacy agencies overseas this year found the number of babies born on behalf of Australians jumped from 97 in 2009 to 269 last year. Already, 254 Australian surrogate babies have been born this year, the group says.
Official figures show only 19 children were born in Australia last year under regulated altruistic surrogacy arrangements, in which the surrogate mother offers her services free but the intended parents pay medical costs.
Surrogacy Australia president Sam Everingham said desperate couples felt they had no choice but to head overseas because surrogacy was such a legal “nightmare” in Australia.
“The fact that such a tiny proportion of children are being born in Australia shows the system has failed,” Mr Everingham said, urging law reform.
Many childless couples are seeking surrogacy deals in India, where the number of Australian babies born to surrogates leapt from 47 in 2009 to 179 last year, according to the survey.
But the figure may be even higher. Immigration Department statistics obtained under freedom-of-information laws show the number of babies being born to Australian citizens in India jumped from 170 in 2008 to 394 last year. While no one knows exactly how many of those children were born via surrogacy, the number of Australians living in India has not risen significantly in the past four years.
Surrogacy Australia estimates an average 50 babies are born to Australian expats in India each year, and that the surge in births of babies who then gain Australian citizenship is due to rising use of Indian surrogates by Australians. The website for Australia’s high commission in India gives parents using a surrogate a guide on how to apply for Australian citizenship for their newborn – even though the practice of paying an overseas surrogate is illegal for residents of New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, and carries a jail term of up to 10 years.
Megan Sainsbury, a spokeswoman for Surrogacy Centre India, told The Sunday Age that since being founded in 2009, the agency had facilitated the births of 350 children, half of whom had Australian parentage.
Couples trying to pursue surrogacy in Australia face formidable hurdles. Parents cannot advertise for a surrogate or an egg donor, so most altruistic arrangements rely on family or friends offering to carry a child. If a couple are able to find a woman willing to carry their child, the process is bureaucratic and tightly regulated. The parents and the surrogate must be approved by a state government committee, and must undergo legal and psychological counselling, and medical and police checks.
“If they feel like you aren’t the right kind of person or if you don’t have the right paperwork, you are knocked back. You are treated like a criminal from the start,” Mr Everingham said.
Even if a couple can negotiate those legal hurdles, once the child is born, the surrogate is considered the birth mother on the birth certificate. And, unlike in Canada and India, a surrogate in Australia has the right to decide to keep the baby.
However, last week the NSW Supreme Court found a gay couple were the legal parents of a child born through surrogacy in Australia, after the birth mother fought to keep the baby. The court found it was in the best interest of the child for the boy to stay with the intended parents, much to the outrage of the Australian Christian Lobby and other groups.
“For many parents, the prospect of having their child kept from them is so terrifying, few are willing to take the risk,” Mr Everingham said.
But overseas surrogacy deals were expensive, he said. The average cost of surrogacy in India, according to a survey of 214 Australian parents, was $77,000. In the US, the cost – including legal and agency fees, payments to the surrogate and medical and travel costs – averaged $176,000.
Mr Everingham said most of the couples who used overseas surrogates were ordinary Australians who mortgaged their houses or borrowed money so they could have a family.
“It is a common misconception that surrogacy is for rich people too busy to have kids. That couldn’t be further from the truth. So many of our parents have tried for years through IVF and adoption, and are desperate.”
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