Our clinic, All IVF, has been targeted, and Dr Pisit has been asked to cease conducting medical procedures for now.
What the hell? I think as I read further.
The military government has called a press conference on the issue to announce it will audit the twelve clinics immediately. Thai-based agents like Kay have been ordered to take their websites offline and adhere to new guidelines if they want to avoid prosecution.
Later, an email from Kay arrives.
“All IVF will remain open for day-to-day business but will not be permitted to perform any medical procedures on site. I have changed Porn’s check-ups to Pyanthai Hospital with a new doctor, Dr Nitwat, good doctor but maybe a bit slower than before with results.”
Everything is in disarray. Richard and Paul, our close friends, are also clients of Dr Pisit but they did not have a pregnancy. Their contract would not be honoured unless All IVF attained the appropriate accreditation from the authorities.
“Our embryo transfer procedure is delayed,” Richard explains to me on the phone from Sydney. “We can’t use a Thai surrogate.” He sighs.
We are told all paid egg donation programs for Thai women would stop. The junta wants exploitation of its decent female citizens to cease immediately.
Jayson and I would never like to think that our son is a result of exploiting Porn, who is a hero in our eyes and will be regarded as a member of our family. Our son will champion her forever.
“Homosexual couples will be forbidden from engagement.” Sam advises we sit tight and stay under the radar. There it is again, target the gays. I have no hang ups with my sexuality, but why is it that we are always first to be ruled out?
Richard and Paul can’t go further. The poor guys are stressed, verging on having a nervous breakdown. The Thai government has called a meeting of the clinics, doctors and medical representatives a week from today, where acceptable standards will be set for the unregulated industry. Sam thinks it is likely they will tighten the rules around surrogacy, making it only available for medical reasons, maybe altruistically only.
“Easier said than done! What will we do now?” An earthquake has just hit eight on the Richter. My unborn baby is trapped there and I can do nothing. Facebook and my phone don’t stop throughout the day. First Richard and Paul, then Tim and Scott, Hunter and Faycal, all pretty much in the same boat.
“Nothing we can do?” they all ask.
Esther, Bec and my family are worried sick.
“I don’t know,” is the only answer I can give. I feel sick! I ring Jayson.
“This meeting in Thailand next week, they must allow us to take our baby home. It would be a humanitarian crisis if they stop us from bringing our baby home to Australia,” I scream on the receiver.
“Our baby is biologically ours,” Jayson says. “If they attempt to stop us from bringing him home, they will have to stop the other three hundred expecting parents too. What will they do with all those babies?”
The surrogate mothers won’t want them and will struggle with the upkeep if forced to take them. They’re gonna be stuck with this.
Wait for news is all we can do. For God’s sake, this is our child they are talking about. If we have to fight with them to keep it, we will just have to.
I am alone in London without Jayson, lonely and sad. My mind aches at what has happened in Thailand. It’s yet another obstacle. This is a tough route, one we must tackle for certain, but all we can do now is stay positive and trust divine intervention comes through for us, like it always has. I close my eyes and say a prayer. I feel slightly better.
I can’t help but feel turmoil inside. I am walking on thin ice that week, trying to look for the slightest bit of hope in the hundreds of reports I read online. But there is none. What will happen in Thailand tomorrow remains vague.
Jayson and I have spoken with each other almost every day since my arrival in London. We text throughout the day, but time differences prove challenging. There is a small window of opportunity to speak early in my morning, about the time he is getting ready to go to bed in Sydney. We are both anxious and waiting for further developments in Thailand, worrying they will be negative and fearing what impact they will have on us.
“Hours before we know our fate and what the future holds for our son,” I text Jayson.
I try to sleep that night, after a full day with Raphael, but struggle with my anxiety. I am mostly awake. Just as I manage to doze off, I hear a beeping sound from my mobile phone. It’s around four in the morning.
They are text messages from Jayson.
“Call me”
“Wake up”
“It’s urgent”
And so on, each message identical in meaning to the previous.
I get it! We need to talk. Something is up for sure, and it doesn’t sound good. I ring him immediately, still cross-eyed from sleep, and he cries hysterically on the phone, the cry of a fearful man.
“It’s not good news. Bad, actually,” he says, still crying, his voice bleak and drawn.
“Yes, I am listening. Don’t worry me, what is going on?” I suspect something to do with Thailand.
“We are fucked. Thailand has stopped surrogacy completely and we can’t bring him home either.” He is in anguish, and the words cut me deep. This is the big bombshell we never expected. Worse than what we imagined; in truth it is completely devastating.
Sam emails an article about the meeting between the various IVF clinics and government representatives; they announced the “ominous news” for those who undertake surrogacy in Thailand. It is over!
“Surrogacy is dead in the water,” another blogging lawyer, Stephen Page writes. The line echoes in my head for weeks. Stephen’s blogs I found crucial and informative. They helped me make impartial decisions during the haphazard times.
He reports that surrogacy in Thailand will be restricted to medically infertile, heterosexual and married couples: the surrogacy must be altruistic and that the surrogate must be a blood relative. Surrogacy is illegal in Thailand if the intended parent or parents are unmarried under Thai law and if any money is paid to surrogates. Removing children from Thailand without the permission of authorities will breach Thailand’s human trafficking laws.
We are in violation, and most probably will be thrown into a Thai jail if we are caught attempting to exit with our son. The new law includes all foreigners currently pursuing surrogacy in Thailand. There is estimated to be more than 300 Australians alone stuck in a similar plight.
We are in serious breach of the new law already and will be even more so when we begin the process of bringing our baby home. The crime is so serious they have threatened a maximum three-year jail sentence and a 200,000-baht fine.
For starters, I don’t want to get stuck in a Bangkok jail cell for any given time. Yuck, yuck, yuck! The thought of becoming some other convict’s bitch, creepy crawlies swarming the cell and a filthy squat toilet is somewhat terrifying. The press will have a field day.
Jayson thinks the Australian embassy will want to ensure new Thai laws are met, hence getting an Australian passport for our baby will be a major nightmare.
“Damn, damn, damn,” is all I can say, murmuring those words again and again under my breath. My stomach is in turmoil.
I don’t know exactly where to start or what to say. I am so far away from Jayson, and the thought of him alone and dealing with this crisis in Sydney is adding to my burden. In London, I have Raphael and his partner Anthony to pacify me, and together we can talk this through. But Jayson, being private in nature, isn’t the type to speak to anyone nor does he handle crises very well. We cry on the phone while agreeing on one thing: with the lengths we have gone to so far for our baby and braving all obstacles, we are still fighting for him, and we are certainly not giving up now. One way or another we will find a way to bring him home legally, or illegally if it comes to that. Nothing will deter us from doing so.
Later, Jayson says his phone rang hot all day with calls from
devastated couples – the usual suspects in tears and their breakdowns in full bloom now. Hunter is beside himself, having been told not long ago that his surrogate is pregnant and of his baby’s apparent heartbeat. Tim and Scott don’t know what to make of things; like us, their baby is halfway through gestation. No one has answers on what to do and everyone wants hope from each other, but there is none to give, at least not now. Jayson rings Sam, who is being quoted in all the newspapers. He wants Sam’s take firsthand.
Sam is slightly more positive than any of us, believing that existing surrogacy arrangements could be honoured. The only issue he can forsee is that we may have to spend more time in Bangkok post-birth than originally planned. He confirms that there is nothing we can do now and that Kay would be in touch with us shortly.
We wonder why Kay had not even attempted to ring either of us in a week. Jayson had tried but she remained uncontactable. She is probably still working out strategies for existing clients and more importantly figuring out what to say to them. Imagine how overwhelmed the poor woman must feel, possibly worrying that she herself may be criminalised for the services she has provided her clients over the years. What about her existing clients; would she drop everything and leave us in the lurch?
I ring her and, after three attempts, Kay picks up the phone. She sounds exhausted and the strain in her voice reflects a broken woman. She tries hard on the phone to be helpful and to offer some consolation. Her first words to me are that “it is not law yet”, and remember, she says, “this is only a medical recommendation.” In order for it to be law, Thailand, a democratically governed country, will need to pass the recommendation through a bill in parliament. But since there is no government and the military interim junta is in control of the country, the recommendation can’t be passed as law yet. How soon this will happen, no one knows. But the junta officials are hard-nosed men, almost like warlords, and scary enough to think they can get away with anything, including taking control of Thailand and its government. This is no small matter.
“But, Aaron, I promise we will help you get your baby out,” Kay continues to reassure me.
But she also has to facilitate the required changes immediately in this tumultuous climate. Technically, she thinks, no one is breaking the law yet because there are no specific Thai laws regarding surrogacy, but there are human trafficking laws, which could include the selling or commercialisation of human embryos and the transport of babies born through surrogacy, and this is what they could get us on.
She promises to update us on another one of her clients, the fretting Australian couple who are in the process of doing their paperwork at the embassy. She believes their twins will be issued passports without any problems. She was on the phone with officials of the Australian Embassy in Thailand earlier today and they said that as long as the paperwork for citizenship is above board, there will be no grounds for anyone to object to the baby’s Australian citizenship by descent application. The embassy is in close contact with the relevant Thai officials and sees no reason to reject any impending requests for passports and entry into Australia. The embassy’s role is to grant citizenship to bona-fide applicants.
“Jayson and you must stay happy for now and hope for the best,” Kay says.
Hope alone isn’t enough for us this minute and there is plenty of room for concern.
I ring Jayson, pacifying him by telling him the hopeful news Kay has shared with me. Rebecca is with him, trying to cheer him up with containers of home-cooked meals from her mother. “Strengthen the poor man and feed him. He is losing weight from starving himself in misery.”
I can just imagine my own mum saying something like that. But the reality is he is a downtrodden and despairing wreck this afternoon. Luckily, Rebecca is there and as always stepping up to the front. She is always the calmest and most rational person we know and has a way of soothing troubled people. I silently wish my child would grow up with a similar temperament to hers. Together, the three of us on speaker phone manage to work out how to control the anxieties. We brainstorm ideas on how to bring our baby home. Reviewing various options ultimately offers some form of consolation, all of them totally crazy and far-fetched.
One ridiculous plan is to fly Porn and her family to Sydney when she is about eight months pregnant so she can deliver the baby here in Australia at the Royal Prince Alfred Private Hospital. Whether it is possible to do so with immigration and visas, we don’t know. But we think she could easily camouflage the pregnancy and pretend to be going on holidays to Australia. She will probably be granted a month’s visa and could have the baby in the hospital, then recover with adequate time to relax before returning home to Thailand. Here we could offer support and there would be no need for paperwork or other immigration stuff.
The more realistic approach is to have the baby in Thailand. My Jayson would have to marry Porn so he would be the legal father – a bit awkward because if he is going to marry anyone, it had better be me. Post-birth, we would bring them all home. Once our son is safely home, Porn could return home to Thailand a few days later. Could work, maybe, but I don’t agree with the marriage thing.
It is Rebecca’s outrageous idea I like the most, and that is to smuggle the baby via boat out of Thailand into Laos, which she jokingly says resembled what happened in the film Not Without My Daughter starring Sally Field. She adds that if Sally could get her eight-year-old away from Sharia law in Iran, we must be able to escape out of Thailand with our newborn. We all laugh at that one, especially at the vision of me in drag, disguised in a burka, walking aimlessly through the salt deserts of Iran with my baby. Call it crazy, but the conspiracy theories offer hope, which is really all we have.
However, as the week goes on, it becomes by far one of the worst weeks of our lives. It is shattering to read daily coverage of surrogacy on the front pages of Australian newspapers. Each story is worse than the one before and none gives us any hope. It leads us to believe that the living nightmare we are faced with is going to end badly. There is nothing we can do about the negative press that haunts us daily.
Days after Thailand declares the end of surrogacy, another bigger drama unfolds. Thai cops expose a perverse human trafficking operation, which makes our lives a living hell. Bangkok police find a 22-year-old Japanese businessman named Shigeta Mitsutoki (reportedly worth about seventy million dollars) had fathered fourteen children from Thai surrogates for sale in other Asian markets, primarily Japan. When police raid an apartment in northern Bangkok, they find nine surrogate babies cared for by Thai nannies. DNA tests later prove Shigetha is the biological father of all the children. He had entered Thailand eighty times to partake in the reproductive technology. The most ridiculous part is when his Thai lawyer claims Shigetha wants a big family because he is rich. He wants enough children so he can have them vote at the Japanese elections to help his nominated party win.
“What a load of jargon,” I say, as further reports deem him to be mentally unstable. More like a psychopath, I think, as I read a report speculating he was selling the babies’ spinal cords for beauty treatment purposes.
Mr Shigeta skips the country before the authorities can catch him. An international search ensues, making him one of the world’s most wanted criminals, and lands his name on Interpol’s list for possible human trafficking. I read stories in disbelief about Shigeta. I can’t help feeling the pressure this would add to our already troublesome position in Thailand.
“Who are these clinics so mad to perform IVF on all those surrogates and entertain this man’s notions? Don’t tell me they weren’t suspicious,” I discuss with Jayson.
True enough, a few days later the most painful discovery on our part is the revelation that a specific clinic had performed the surrogacy for Mr Shigeta. The clinic in question is All IVF. The doctor under investigation is Dr Pisit. There is an inspection of Dr Pisit’s clinic and medical records. Someone may as well just slay me now.
As if All IVF’s involvement with Shigeta wasn’t bad enou
gh, guess what? All IVF is forced to close. It is shattering when, on Friday 8 August, Thai authorities walk into Pisit’s clinic and shut down the entire operation, causing major distress for my peers and me. Dr Pisit disappears, MIA, and is wanted for questioning. His website is deleted by authorities.
I feel sick. Dr Pisit, embroiled in the appalling medical malpractice! The blow this time is massive. It raises serious fears not only for us but for Porn and for the stranded Australian couples and their surrogates.
My phone runs hot again, disrupting my already stressful life. Richard and Paul ring with no news of their embryos stored at the clinic – their whereabouts now unknown. Hunter and Faycal are concerned as their surrogate is nearing the end of the first trimester and can’t be located.
Every time a crisis takes place, everyone we met in Thailand calls. Sam does well keeping me informed and I don’t mind playing Mother Teresa – though I am in a dire state myself, not up to the task of providing advice.
Sam rings me to share what he has learned about the clinic.
“All IVF was shut down because they say it was not recognised under law as a clinic to offer fertility treatments. I think it was a ploy to get the key players to stop, Dr Pisit for sure.”
I am shattered that our charismatic doctor could be thought capable of the accusations being aimed at him. I feel dirty from the whole experience.
“Why would they say such a thing about Dr Pisit? He is a leading IVF doctor in Thailand,” I stress. “And we like him; he’s a good chap.”
“He performs about seven hundred IVF procedures each year. Three quarters of them are for Australians,” Sam says.
Designer Baby Page 19
