matt ralston

Gay Couple’s Surrogate Baby Kidnapping Is A Head Scratcher

Santos

Manuel Santos and Gordon “Bud” Lake are a gay couple from the United States who paid a surrogate service in Thailand $15,000 to have a donor egg and Santos’ sperm implanted into an impoverished Thai woman, and now she won’t give the baby to them. Even though she signed a contract.

Santos and Lake have another baby they had some poor woman in India carry for thirty sacks of rice. Apparently in their rabid quest to spread their DNA, they are able to overlook the slummy conditions of their faceless baby printers. Which is fine. They’re not out to save the world. If that happened, what kind of discount rate could they get on human baby incubators? They just need to get their baby and leave these smelly countries at once.

The woman who birthed the baby is currently in possession of it. Her name is Patidta Kusongsaang, which Santos and Lake first read on the contract she signed when she refused to give up the baby.

Patidta is uneducated, and coincidentally a homophobe. She explained her decision to keep the baby she gave birth to:

“First of all, they are not natural parents in Thai society. They are same sex, not like male and female that can take care of babies.”

It’s unclear if Patidta really believes this or was fed these lines. Human trafficked teenagers an eviction away from kidney donation are often easily manipulated.

This whole process was supposed to be much easier.

When Santos and Lake arranged for their Thai surrogate over a year ago, it was seen as a pretty low risk maneuver, like ordering Thai for delivery.

Then an Australian guy named David Pharnell, who is a convicted child sex offender, and his lovely wife arranged for a Thai woman to give birth to their baby. The woman ended up having twins, one of which had Down Syndrome, and they left it in Thailand and returned to Australia with the other one.

This sent shockwaves throughout Thai society and Thailand’s dictatorship put an end to the surrogacy programs without even allowing a vote on it. There was written an exemption for couples who had inked their contracts before this, because Thailand is one of those friendly military ruled fascist countries as opposed to the scary kind.

Unfortunately in a primitive country such as Thailand, and the U.S. a month ago, the laws defining a couple are written as “Man and woman.”

That’s probably why that moronic baby machine said that thing earlier about same sex couples not being able to take care of babies.

This story doesn’t have a clear protagonist, and seems to pit LGBT rights against a host of women’s rights issues.

This is why it hasn’t received much news coverage, it could actually foster an intelligent debate.

It’s obviously wrong to discriminate against gay people. If Santos and Lake had not been gay, they would have had a much easier time keeping their baby.

Yet it’s also probably wrong to seek out a country with lax laws on human rights and pay a disadvantaged person to sign a contract to carry a baby for you.

This is a cataclysm of archaism and modernity and raises many questions: Why would these people not just adopt a baby. How valid is this contract. If this woman broke the contract, legally speaking, could she not refund the money and keep the child. Should signed contracts ever be involved with the creation of life. Could this count as bondage. Isn’t it kind of fucked up on a human level that these guys have an extra $15,000 for this elaborate procedure to be carried out in a country where so many people have nothing. Is this a sustainable model for humanity going forward. Are westerners going to turn the developing world into baby mills. Is all life equal.

I see both sides of the argument. Something you won’t hear on TV.

The couple most likely won’t be able to get the baby back, which is truly awful and unjust, particularly because their orientation plays a factor. On the other hand, this woman won’t have the baby she carried taken away from her, which would seem equally awful and unjust.

Santos can take solace in the fact he did his part for humanity and sewed his reproductive oats. The child will hopefully grow up to be strong and healthy and pass on Santos’ genes itself, which is, apparently in this couple’s view, important.

It will just live in Thailand.

If that’s not the life they’d want for their baby, then it begs the question, why do this in Thailand?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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