After years of saving and planning, a gay couple were thrilled to find surrogates who became pregnant with ‘triplings’ last year.
Triplings are three babies born from the sperm of one man and one egg donor, but carried by different surrogates. In this case there were two surrogate mothers and three of the four implanted embryos were successful.
But during the Mexican surrogates’ pregnancy, the law changed, leaving the couple high and dry.
Abandoned by their adoption agency and left with a huge medical bill, they are now fighting to be able to bring their children home.
The couple from Auckland are stranded in Mexico.
They are running out of funds because one of the babies had medical complications after birth and required hospital care costing NZ$118,132.
As a result, a crowd funding page has been set up to bring the couple, who asked not to be named, and their babies home.
Friends of the couple set up the crowd-funding page as a means of helping pay for a combination of hospital fees, living expenses and travel to obtain passports so they are able to leave Mexico.
Top Comments
If one of the men is the biological father of the babies why would an adoption agency need to be involved ? While I understand the men may want to both be legally recognised as the babies fathers, why cant the biological father of the children return to NZ with the children where they can be treated by the NZ health system, and sort out the other details later? Plenty of children are raised by single parents without adoption agencies becoming involved, why cant the surrogate simply "abandon her parental rights" and the father take sole legal custody of the children? Is the surrogate attempting to extort more money from these men? Or is there a law in Mexico stating the biological father has no legal rights regarding his children? I don't understand why they are stranded in Mexico. Surely an adoption agency would not have covered a 6 figure medical bill even if surrogacy was still legal, so unexpected medical costs relating to a sick child are a separate issue to the legality/illegality of surrogacy. I don't clearly understand what the issue is meant to be in this situation, but I hope it all works out for them.