Several months ago we read about a couple from Australia who hired a Thai surrogate so she could bear the child they always wanted. During month three of the surrogate’s pregnancy the couple were informed that the 21 year-old surrogate was having twins, one of whom tested positive for Down’s syndrome. According to the surrogate, the parents-to-be implored her to have an abortion but she refused.
When the twins were born the agency who arranged the surrogacy delivered the “healthy” twin girl to the couple, leaving behind the baby boy who also had a congenital heart defect. Once the rejection of this little boy went viral, kind people around the world began donating monies, more than $150,000, to the surrogate mother who vowed to keep the baby and was surprised and heartened by the generosity of strangers.
The Australian couple were vilified and attempted to tell their side of the story, which was that they prayed fervently for their baby’s boy health when the twins were born two months premature, but were told the baby boy would not survive more than a day.
The media storm accelerated when it was publicly revealed that the biological father, an Australian, was a convicted pedophile and his Asian wife was aware of his sordid past. At the same time, the media released information that more than 65 babies born of surrogates in Thailand for gay couples from Israel were in the hands of Thai social services, because the Israeli government refused to grant immigration visas to the children.
These stories and others tell of the difficulties experienced by adoptive parents, surrogate mothers, and other players in the world of assisted reproduction and adoption.
A new story out of New York sheds further light on the frailties of international adoption. In the case of Matter of Adoption of Child A and Child C, a Long Island couple adopted two children from Russia in 2008. The children were described as “healthy and socially well-adjusted siblings”, but their adoptive parents had reason to doubt what they had been told when both children began to exhibit serious mental health problems. The couple also learned that the children were not related and both had been victims of sexual abuse. This truth began to explain the children’s bizarre behaviour including their threats to kill the parents.
Nassau County Judge Edward McCarty III will hear the parent’s application to void the adoption which will be heard in open court although the names of the parents and the children will be sealed. Judge McCarty explained that he wanted the proceedings to be public because 18 Russian children who were adopted by American families died violently in the last 20 years, most of them only residing in the US for six months.
The Long Island children, who are 12 and 14 years-old, are presently in state mental health facilities.
Lawdiva aka Georgialee Lang
Lawdiva's Blog 
My late father, a lawyer, did private adoptions in Ontario for many years (unfortunately for him, the legalization of abortion and the wider acceptance of unwed mothers put a dent in his business). He was leery of surrogacy when it arrived on the adoption scene, because he sensed some of the issues that might arise (if he were alive today, he’d probably say, “See, I told you so!”). He had also done a few international adoptions, after the war in Bangladesh. Most of those worked out OK, though not all of them (there was a researcher who tried to track those adoptions over time; I’m not sure whatever became of his work), but I don’t think any of them had the same sort of end result as the one you describe in New York.
Reblogged this on Family Law Richardson Texas TX and commented:
Family law richardson wants to know, “what happens when surrogacy and adoption goes wrong?”
Wow.
What do you think?