"The Womb of the World"

The surrogacy industry in Thailand was placed under intense scrutiny last year when the media sensation called Baby Gammy burst onto the international scene.

An Australian couple commissioned Gammy and his twin sister from a Thai surrogate by an Australian couple. Upon discovering that Gammy had been born with Down syndrome, the couple collected his healthy sister and left the country, leaving Gammy behind. Gammy’s Thai birth mother refused to abandon the child and was quickly lauded as a national saint.

Further poking and prodding revealed more complications. The adoptive father had been convicted of pedophilia twice and met his current wife through a Chinese marriage agency a year before. As the media frenzy escalated, an unrelated case surfaced revealing that a Japanese man had fathered up to 16 children using Thai surrogates.

Thailand’s newly established military government became increasingly sensitive to mounting external pressure and quickly acted on a long-dormant bill banning foreign clients from obtaining surrogacy services. Declaring that Thailand refuses to be “the womb of the world,” legislators passed a bill in February 2015, allowing only native or mixed-race heterosexual couples access to Thai surrogates.

This case highlights a number of issues, not the least of which is the loophole that gives convicted sexual predators access to adopted children through foreign agencies. The focus of the controversy is the altruism denied to baby Gammy due to his condition. The possibility of “designer” babies goes hand in hand with the luxury of choosing a healthy child over an unhealthy one.

This is by no means a new concept; humans and animals have always been forced to make choices about survival. However, this incident is purely based on want instead of need and is complicated by a contractual agreement between two parties. The surrogacy industry inherently turns infants into commodities—so what to do with a faulty product?

The alternate perspective cannot be ignored: many, potentially wonderful, parents who are unable to have children cannot afford the high price of surrogacy services in countries where it is highly regulated, like the U.S.

If babies are the new global commodity, how do we evaluate worth?