Tragic outcome of child surrogacy

For broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 6 Oct 2013.

According to a report in The New Zealand Herald, a couple has discovered the baby they brought home from a foreign fertility clinic is not theirs.  They’re fighting to find out what happened to their own embryo, but they have also come to love the child, now aged 2.

The baby was conceived through surrogacy using a donor egg. When the couple commissioned DNA tests to get a visitor’s visa for the baby to come to NZ, the results revealed no genetic link to the father, egg donor or surrogate. The couple has no idea whether their own embryo was born alive and switched in the nursery and, if so, who is raising it.

Baby X is now said to be stateless, anonymous, a “scrap of humanity” with no formal identity.

Every child has a right to an identity, a family, and to grow up in a family environment of love and happiness.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.