Australia’s Surrogacy Laws Forced Me Offshore — This Is What Happened

by Linda Wood on Jan 04, 2026 0 comments

DISCLAIMER

This blog describes my personal experience with international commercial surrogacy. It is written in full truth and detail, not to scare, but to educate and raise awareness about the risks of current Australian laws.

This story reflects my own journey and does not represent every surrogacy experience or the full picture of surrogacy practices worldwide. It is not intended as medical, legal, or travel advice. Anyone considering surrogacy — domestic or international — should seek professional legal and medical guidance.

Australia’s Surrogacy Laws Forced Me Offshore — This Is What Happened

The Brutal Truth About Commercial Surrogacy and how Australia’s Laws Force Families Into Danger.

Before you even step on the plane, before the contracts, before the money, there are the glossy websites.

Beautiful photos. Smiling surrogates. Western doctors in white coats. Words like ethical, supported, transparent. You’re fed an image that overseas commercial surrogacy is clean, regulated, legal, and even exciting — a hopeful solution when all other doors have closed.

That picture is a lie.

And it is a lie that Australian law helps perpetuate.

Because commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, people like me — desperate to become parents — are pushed offshore into systems that are unregulated, opaque, and deeply exploitative.

What follows is not theory or opinion. It is my lived experience.

An Illegal Dream With No Map

I navigated international commercial surrogacy because Australia gave me no safe, lawful alternative.

There was no clear guide, no official pathway, no government oversight, no protection. Everything was confusing, time-consuming, and terrifying. From the very beginning, you are operating in the shadows.

Creating embryos in Australia for surrogacy was a battle in itself. Specialists refused to be involved. Doors were slammed shut. I was forced to lie, to withhold information, to cut corners — not because I wanted to, but because there was no other way forward.

You sell pieces of your soul just to get embryos created.

Then comes the next impossible task: getting those embryos overseas without killing them in transit.

The contracts you sign mean nothing under Australian law. If something goes wrong — and many things do — you have no legal leg to stand on. You are stranded in a foreign country, often without the language, the culture, or any meaningful understanding of the system you are now trapped inside.

You live with the constant fear that it is all a hoax. That your embryos are being flushed away. That no transfer is happening at all. That the baby you are promised may never exist.

And there is nothing — and no one — to protect you.

The Cost: Financial, Emotional, and Human

The financial cost alone was staggering: $200,000 all up.

But the emotional cost was worse.

You are ripped off. Lied to. Gaslit. Promises change daily. Corruption is blatant. Facilities are unsanitary. Standards that Australians take for granted simply do not exist.

The surrogate — the woman carrying your child — receives only a tiny fraction of the enormous fees you pay. The rest disappears into agencies and middlemen. You see how people live. The poverty. The squalor. And it breaks you.

This is not empowerment.
This is not ethical.
This is exploitation — enabled by Australia’s refusal to regulate what it has driven offshore.

Birth Without Humanity

Our twins were in medical danger. They should have been delivered by caesarean. We begged. We involved lawyers. No one listened. No one cared.

Baby A came out breech.
Baby B came out sideways, became stuck, and was born blue, silent, and limp.

Ten doctors were in the room. Not one showed compassion.

The surrogate mother was denied any form of pain relief. I begged to pay double — anything — just to help her. She laboured all day with her legs in stirrups. No food. No water. No dignity.

We communicated through Google Translate.

Men were not allowed in the hospital — full stop. They were banished to the street outside. I was eventually forced out of the delivery room while the placenta was still being delivered.

“Go home. Come back tomorrow.”

It felt unreal. Like a nightmare I couldn’t wake from.

When the babies are born, the cruelty only intensifies.

Meeting Your Babies Through a Hallway

After birth, the babies were taken away.

They were required to stay in hospital for three full nights — no exceptions. We were allowed five minutes per day to see them.

Five minutes.

No holding. No touching. No feeding.

These visits didn’t happen in a room. They happened standing in a hospital hallway, surrounded by strangers, noise, and indifference.

It was brutal.

The Moment I Broke

On day three, we returned to the hospital to collect our babies.

Standing at the nursery door, peering through a small glass window, we witnessed something that still haunts me.

Newborn babies — naked — being held upside down under a cold water tap, bathed as they screamed. No gentleness. No care. No urgency to stop their distress.

Then I watched one tiny baby slammed — and I mean slammed — onto a change table.

That was it.

I lost it.

I stormed into the nursery. There were around twenty bassinets, a baby in each. I told the nurse, in no uncertain terms:

“Give me my babies. I’m taking them. Right now.”

I was scrambling, grabbing the twins, their bags, their paperwork, while being screamed at by a woman I could not understand.

At that point, they couldn’t stop me.

And we walked out.

Trapped Overseas With No Way Home

Once the babies were discharged, we did not come home.

For two long, relentless months, we were trapped in a foreign country with newborns, drowning in mountains of paperwork that never seemed to end. I spent endless hours awake, night after night, consumed by forms I barely understood and processes I could barely navigate.

None of the medical records were in English. Translation certificates. Lawyer‑certified documents. Stamped authorisations. Birth certificates. Citizenship applications. Passports. One missing signature, one absent stamp, and weeks of painstaking effort could be wiped away in an instant.

The chaos was magnified by a city that seemed to conspire against us.

Internet connections worked half the time, leaving me cut off just when I needed guidance the most. Power was routinely switched off for hours each day to conserve energy, plunging us into darkness as I tried desperately to organise, scan, and submit documents for approvals.

Every day felt like a battle, every night a war. There was no margin for error, no safety net, and the weight of responsibility pressed down on me like a physical force.

You have no support system.
No Medicare.
No certainty.

You are caring for newborns in survival mode, terrified of delays, terrified of mistakes, terrified of being trapped indefinitely.

Living Conditions That Felt Unsafe and Inhumane

During these two months, we lived in three different apartments, desperately trying to find somewhere even remotely safe.

The final apartment was considered luxury. It was not unusual to see prostitutes in the hallways, being verbally and physically abused by groups of men. No one flinched. No one intervened. This was normal — apparently.

Other apartments:

Beds riddled with bed bugs
Sheets and pillows stained with blood
Broken locks
Elevators that routinely failed, trapping you in darkness

The cars had no seatbelts. Babies travelled on your knees.

In shops, staff followed you so closely it felt like they were physically touching you.

On one particular day, I had $100 from my purse stolen by a staff member while I was reading a medicine label. After what felt like an hour of confrontation, I got the money back. No apology. Instead she charged me double for the medication.

I didn't even care at this point.

There Was No Respect — Especially for Women and Children

Every day outside felt like a threat. Women were disregarded. Children were invisible. Safety was fiction.

My ten-year-old daughter was almost run over more than once, deliberately. On the most terrifying occasion, she stood on the footpath as a car mounted the kerb. The driver saw her — and instead of stopping — he nudged the vehicle toward her as if to say move or die.

Other times, she was shoved, smacked in the face with a handbag, and barged into while innocently walking down the the street. No one intervened. No one cared.

My twelve-year-old son faced abuse too. An elderly homeless woman struck him twice with a cane — for what? For walking past without giving her money.

This was the environment my newborn twins were born into. All I wanted was to get them out alive.

The Environment Was Suffocating

The air was thick, black, polluted, and suffocating.
Everything felt unsafe.
Everything felt hostile.

Stray dogs roam every open space, riddled with fleas and illness as they search for any kind of food. Some are aggressive, some follow you home. Packs of cats and kittens are a common sight—by packs, I mean fifty at a time—many inbred and living in what appears to be abandoned, derelict buildings. I later discovered these buildings were in fact, peoples homes.

The Greatest Lie: “This Protects Women”

Our surrogate received only a small fraction of the enormous fees we paid. The rest went to agencies and intermediaries.

You see her living conditions. You see how disposable she becomes once the baby is born.

This is not empowerment. This is not dignity.

Australia doesn’t prevent exploitation of women — it exports it.

When You Finally Leave, Something in You Stays Behind

When you finally board the plane home, there is relief — but also shock, grief, and exhaustion so deep it takes years to surface.

People expect gratitude. Happiness. Silence.

So you pack it away. You block it out. You move forward because your children need you.

But the truth remains:

No parent should ever have to endure this to build a family.

I have been to traumatised to share my experience until now, almost 3 years later.

Health Risks That Lasted Months

The flight home left me with a final parting gift. A parasite. I was violently ill for two weeks, unable to care for myself let alone my kids.

During this time Baby B was sick. He was taken to emergency numerous times and was eventually diagnosed with failure to thrive. He spent months in and out of hospital.

Miraculously, today he is a perfectly healthy and happy 2 year old.