Australian duo feared losing both children
Print Edition
THE Australian parents of twins caught up in a surrogacy scandal in Thailand wanted both babies but the surrogate mother threatened to involve the police and they feared she would keep both children.
David and Wendy Farnell were speaking publicly for the first time since the story broke more than a week ago of 7-month-old baby Gammy, who has Down’s syndrome and is being cared for by his surrogate mother in Thailand.
The couple told Australian television they felt they had little choice but to leave Thailand with Gammy’s healthy sister.
“We wanted to bring him with us,” David Farnell, 56, told the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes program.
They returned to Australia with Gammy’s sister Pipah as the surrogate mother Pattaramon Janbua had told them “if we try to take our little boy, she’s going to get the police and she’s going to come and take our little girl and she’s going to keep both of the babies,” he said. The couple have been criticized for apparently rejecting the boy, who also has a hole in his heart and is being treated for a lung infection in a Thai hospital.
Pattaramon said doctors, the surrogate agency and the baby’s parents had known that Gammy was disabled when she was four months pregnant but had not told her until the seventh month. She feared she would be asked to abort him but would have refused due to her Buddhist beliefs.
The case has drawn international attention to the lack of regulation of international surrogacy and sparked calls in Australia for an overhaul of laws. Public outrage intensified when it became known that David Farnell was jailed in 1997 for sex offences involving three girls aged under 13.
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