By Nino Bucci and Bianca Hall
Australian sex offenders are going overseas in search of surrogate babies in worrying numbers, says a leading surrogacy lawyer who believes urgent law reform is needed.
The Age revealed on Friday that one man, who cannot be named, had a decades-long history of accessing child porn and had been abusing his young nieces before he became the surrogate father of twins.
Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia.Credit: Getty Images
He applied with his wife to become surrogate parents and used his sperm, a donor egg from the Ukraine and a surrogate from the Asian clinic to conceive the twins.
Stephen Page, a Brisbane-based family lawyer specialising in surrogacy, told Fairfax he felt ill when he read the story and says the case highlighted a wider problem with child surrogacy arrangements.
According to the Department of Border Protection, babies born through surrogacy last year made up about 1.4 per cent of Australia's "total citizenship by descent caseload" of 17,357.
But Mr Page said he believed the true figure may be far higher, and many parents returning to Australia may simply not tell authorities their new baby had been carried by a surrogate.
While regulations protect the interests of parents, surrogates, donors and children in Australia, local bans on paying women to carry babies for would-be parents mean many are flocking to developing nations where commercial surrogacy is legal.
Mr Page said in the absence of international regulation, the Australian government should clamp down on citizens travelling overseas to engage surrogates.
"Australia seems to be the leading exporter of cases such as this. So we should be making it much harder for people," he said.
However, a family with two children born in the same Asian clinic as the abused twins defended the service, saying the clinic provided incredible care to the surrogates and international families who paid tens of thousands for their services.
The children's grandfather said his son's wife could not naturally have children because of a medical condition which had pushed the couple towards surrogacy.
"I think it's disgusting that Australia basically doesn't allow surrogacy here, which forces people to look for overseas options," he said.
"There was no possible way they could have had children if it wasn't through that clinic. And I couldn't speak highly enough of that particular clinic."
The grandfather said attributing any blame to the surrogacy clinic - or the laws that allow it to service Western couples - was no different to blaming an Australian hospital if they allowed a child to be born that was later abused.
Federal Circuit Court chief judge John Pascoe told a family law conference in Shanghai in 2014 that a "hardline" regime should be introduced to protect children and women from the vagaries of international surrogacy.
"Surrogacy is the new frontline in the trafficking and commodification of women and newborn children," he said.
Federal MP George Christensen, who chaired a parliamentary inquiry into surrogacy arrangements, due to report in June, said the committee had heard many accounts of surrogates in developing countries being exploited.
He said while "we can't police everything that happens in other countries", his personal belief was that a "precautionary principle" should be developed, whereby Australia didn't allow its citizens to employ surrogates in developing countries.
This could involve refusing to allow citizens to bring babies back who had been born to overseas surrogates.