- Due to surrogacy laws in Perth, WA, Anthony and his partner, Joseph had to find a surrogate in Thailand to have their child, using Joseph’s sister’s egg and Anthony’s sperm
- When their surrogate, Onepen, was three months pregnant with their child, Thailand passed a law banning foreigners from seeking surrogacy
- The couple had to track down Onepen and they eventually brought home their baby daughter
- When Anthony and Joseph turned to a Cambodian surrogate, Chhom, to add to their family, the country’s government again banned surrogacy during Chhom’s pregnancy
- In order to meet their twins, the couple had to arrange for Chhom to be smuggled over the border or she could be forced to raise their children
- Anthony Fisk, from Perth, WA, tells of their daring plot to keep their surrogate safe and bring their babies home to their family in Australia
As my partner, Joseph, 28, and I walked to the gym, I excitedly opened a new email on my phone.
Congratulations, it read.
“We’re having a baby!” I cried out, hugging Joseph tight.
Read more: We adopted 16 surrogate grannies
Joseph and I had always talked about how much we wanted to have children but as a gay couple living in Perth we didn’t think it was going to be possible.
Then, in 2013, I discovered a Facebook group called Gay Dads Western Australia.
Many of the members posted about their experiences of having their child via a surrogate.
Western Australia had legalised altruistic surrogacy in 2008, meaning the surrogate is not paid a fee for her services, but may be reimbursed for reasonable expenses, but only heterosexual couples and single women were allowed to pursue it.
Many gay couples in WA had to look overseas to find women to have their babies, in countries like the US and Thailand, where commercial surrogacy is legal.
After discussing it with Joseph and doing our research, we decided to go ahead with finding a surrogate in Thailand to have our child in 2014.
We contacted a surrogacy agency in Bangkok that was recommended to us by the Facebook group. They told us their surrogates were well looked after.
It would cost us upwards of $50,000.
“It’ll be worth it to have our baby,” Joseph said, and I agreed.
After the agency picked our surrogate – a lady named Onepen – I went to Thailand to deposit my sperm.
Joseph’s sister, Rose, kindly offered to fly over there to donate her eggs.
After we found out Onepen was pregnant, our excitement continued to grow with every update from the surrogacy clinic.
Then, in August 2014, when Onepen was three months’ pregnant, Thailand passed a law to ban foreigners from seeking surrogacy.
Suddenly, we were reading reports of surrogacy clinics being shut down, including our one, who we now had no way of contacting.
We’d never met Onepen so we didn’t know how to get in touch with her either.
In an instant, our joy had turned to terror.
“Does this mean we don’t get to keep our baby?” I panicked.
After many sleepless nights, Joseph and I were relieved to hear the Thai government had decided surrogate pregnancies that had already been conceived could still go ahead.
But we still had no way of contacting Onepen, so we hired an interpreter in Thailand to track her down.
A month later, I flew to Bangkok to meet Onepen to make sure that she and our baby were safe.
“Everything is fine,” she reassured me with the help of an interpreter.
In February 2015, Joseph and I flew over to Bangkok for the birth of our daughter, Celeste.
At 41, my dream of being a dad had finally come true.
“Thank you for giving us this beautiful gift,” I told Onepen.
After spending the next month in Bangkok sorting out Celeste’s passport, we took her home.
Raising our daughter was even more wondrous than I’d imagined and soon the topic of having more kids came up.
“I want three,” Joseph kept saying.
“Let’s just have one more,” I insisted.
In 2016, we turned to Cambodia to have our second baby using my sperm and Rose’s egg again, and were very excited when we were told our surrogate, Chhom, was pregnant.
A few weeks later, we received another update from our surrogacy agency.
You’re having twins, the email said.
My jaw dropped in shock. Joseph was thrilled.
“I guess you got your wish for three kids!” I laughed.
Then, in October 2016, we received shocking news – the Cambodian government had just banned surrogacy.
“I can’t believe this is happening again!” I said to Joseph.
We started hearing reports that Cambodian surrogates were being forced to keep their babies. Some were being arrested on planes for trying to leave the country.
Our surrogate agent advised us to smuggle Chhom out of Cambodia by arranging to drive her over the border into Thailand.
“This is insane,” Joseph said with a frown.
“I know, but what other choice do we have?” I replied
Chhom could be forced to raise our babies.
Chhom agreed to the idea, so after speaking to a lawyer, who advised us it’d be legal for Chhom to give birth in Thailand, we reluctantly went ahead with the plan.
Our agent said she’d be hidden in the back of a truck and transported over the border in the middle of the night, and taken to Bangkok, where we’d arranged accommodation for her.
We were wracked with guilt for her wellbeing. But thankfully, our agent told us Chhom had made it safely to Bangkok.
Then in February 2017, Chhom went into labour eight weeks before her due date. Our tiny daughter, Iris, and son, Julian, were two days old when I made it to the hospital.
Joseph, who’d stayed home until we’d arranged for someone to look after Celeste, joined us four days later.
The agency helped Chhom travel back to Cambodia and we flew home three weeks later, happy to have the family we’d always wanted.
Today, we’re so grateful to be raising Celeste, nine, and our twins, seven, in Perth.
It cost us $200,000 to have them, but we wouldn’t change it for the world.
Joseph and I are now advocating for the Western Australian government to make altruistic surrogacy legal for gay couples and single men, like it is in the other states.
We’ve met so many men who want so badly to become fathers and we don’t want them to have to go through the same heartache we did to have a family.
