We get that human trafficking is wrong. Why are we trafficking babies?

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After reading yet another devastating story about surrogacy gone wrong this week, there was just one person I really needed to talk to.

This week’s horror? Two Canberra women, Melinda and Gail McCann, paid censured Melbourne lawyer Paul Norris-Ongso’s company Global Surrogacy $100,000 for a baby born in Colombia. The result? Abandoned surrogate mother with health problems. Inadequate paperwork. And an entire family in limbo, including baby Alexis.

And you can’t possibly have forgotten the separate case of Gammy. Gammy was born with Down syndrome. He was left behind in Thailand with his young surrogate mum. The Australian couple who engaged the services of the surrogate took Gammy’s twin, a girl, home with them. Turns out the dad was convicted of sex offences against girls years earlier.

There are plenty of other surrogacy horror stories and you can read some of them in submissions to the Australian Law Reform Commission now holding an inquiry into surrogacy. Sure, there is joy among the submissions. There is also immeasurable sadness.

This moment is a tipping point for surrogacy in Australia. Do we stay with the model of what we describe as “altruistic surrogacy”, doing it for love, kindness or charity? Or do we go with “compensated surrogacy”, a coded word for payment for the surrogate mother which goes beyond the bare expenses. It’s used instead of the more honest “commercial surrogacy” because that seems too much like we are buying and selling babies.

The baby broker: A ‘disposable’ surrogate, her vanishing contract and a family stranded

The ALRC was........

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