‘It became too difficult’: Why Alex is looking overseas to add a baby to his family
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/qld-calls-to-update-australian-surrogacy-laws/106348962?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
35 Comments
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Honestly, this is insane. I have no issue with LGBTQI+ people or couples. But, to have an exploitative industry to farm children for them is not progress. It is class entitlement and is disgusting. And this stands for the majority of the IVF industry also which exploits people terribly.
Until we are at a Children of Men like situation, I do not support this kind of technology, and its exploitation of people, generally the working class to subsidise it.
I genuinly love that we don’t have paid surrogacy here, it opens a can of worms that is just way to hard to regulate appropriately and fairly.
I understand the desire but I think it speaks multitudes that in countries where altruistic surrogacy is the norm that people have difficulty finding a surrogate. That means people are actively looking for the desperate internationally because minimal women are volunteering for this in wealthy countries. It feels inherently predatory. Perhaps there’s a small case for increasing or changing what is considered reasonable compensation but it feels doubtful.
Just something so unsavoury about travelling overseas to rent a women’s uterus for your desire to have a kid (or more kids).
I hope the government bans the purchase/sale of babies.
There is no argument anyone can give to me to not make me think surrogacy outside of 100% altruistic surrogacy is not gross.
Is there a reason they are choosing surrogacy over adoption?
What a creep.
“Already with surrogacy, there is that much bureaucracy and red tape, it’s just adding another hurdle when we’re already facing financial hardship and emotional hardship in this journey,” Alex says.
Mind you this is a completely voluntary choice. I don’t really want to hear about your financial and emotional hardship when a woman is putting her body on the line to give you your dream child.
“Alex affectionately describes his nine-year-old coffee-coloured cavoodle Ronnie as his first child. As a gay couple, surrogacy is their best option for giving Ronnie a human sibling.”
That’s how these people see those babies. Like a new, trendy dog.
Absolutely vile
Wtf is with all these ABC articles lately that are trying to paint for-profit surrogacy as a necessity?
It is blatant exploitation, flying to a poor developing country to literally rent the womb of some random woman desperate enough to sign up is disgusting and dehumanising. Rich couples (regardless of sexuality or infertility issues) need to face reality and accept the biological reality that not everyone can have kids. Viewing poor women as incubators that can pop out a baby for you if you just pay enough is textbook misogyny.
Glad to see the growing backlash against surrogacy online, particularly in the case of rich celebrities who most likely do it for vanity reasons.
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The reason I can’t get my head around surrogacy:
Selling the baby you’ve agreed to hand over at birth (irrespective of who provided the gametes) is 100% okay
Deciding to sell your 6 week old baby (irrespective of who provided the gametes) is a criminal offence.
If one is clearly wrong then I really struggle as to why the other isn’t.
We really need to fix adoption in Australia. It’s incredibly difficult and incredibly rare – in Victoria last year there were literally 6 adoptions of children to adoptive parents from another family. Not 60, 6. And some of those were likely adoptions from foster care.
This is slavery.
No one should ever be able to buy a child.
I don’t get why people think it’s okay for women to take on all the risks of pregnancy and birth to have their own children, but not to receive what is often generous compensation to carry a child for someone else? It baffles me….. there are so many jobs that involve physical and psychological risks but somehow the work of gestation is seen as off limits, I think it devalues what women go through to carry and birth a child
Why is the ABC bothering with this douchebags story
As a donor conceived person, these stories are so incredibly disturbing.
The trauma of being DC is well documented. Why not add further complexities by buying a human overseas and pretend that cutting ties with their genetic relatives will never matter.
The surrogate is clearly the one being “altruistic”.
I wonder how Alex – the lawyer – feels about funding human trafficking by criminals – or is he just pretending that this isn’t happening?
And he wants less regulation? Why? So he can have what he wants, no matter the consequences for everyone else, so that it’s a bit cheaper for him?
Anyone who handwaves away the massive and legitimate concerns about commercial surrogacy are totally ignorant.
A colleague of mine went through this back in early 2022 when they went through a surrogate in Ukraine.
The cost was close to $100k and they got out just before the bombing began and they were lucky as it could have been a nightmare.
I am both child free and pet free so I would never understand someone spending $100k for a baby but to each their own.
Wrong and selfish
They’re trying to normalise baby farming
Seriously what about the rights of the actual child?
Surrogacy is exploitation. Why is it that so many people who can’t have children can’t seem to come to terms with it? No one gets everything they want in life. Wish they’d just get therapy instead of exploiting the poor.
>”Already with surrogacy, there is that much bureaucracy and red tape, it’s just adding another hurdle when we’re already facing financial hardship and emotional hardship in this journey,” Alex says.
“The government making it slightly harder for me to use an impoverished 19 year old Columbian girl as a human incubator is hurting my feelings!”
Oh Alex wants to use a servant to have a baby.
No one is entitled to a child.
Child birth isn’t a walk in the park, and lots of women still die in childbirth particularly in these very impoverished countries with limited access to medical care.
It’s all a little 1800s feeling. Buying babies from women who live in poorer countries and don’t have tons of options. It’s feels wrong when i think about it. There are millions of kids and babies already born who need a loving family.
Why seek a surrogate when there’s already so many children already alive in foster care or other circumstances that might be adopted into a loving family? Surrogacy is not the only option available to this couple.
Textbook exploitation.