"James" and his partner "Mikey" (not their real names)
are getting to know their newborn baby.
(BABY CRIES) Okay, all right, all right...
Oh, good burp.
The boys have been in a committed relationship for five years.
They wanted a family so much
they had to break the law to create it.
I just went for it.
We wanted a family and we wanted to get it done
and we'd done our research
and we went over there and just went full steam ahead.
When it comes down to it,
people are going to do what they're going to do
to get their families.
Thousands like James and Mikey struggle to start a family,
gay couples, singles and those with fertility problems.
Commercial surrogacy, or paying a woman to carry your baby,
is a criminal offence within Australia
carrying severe penalties.
Fines of at least $100,000 and/or a jail term in some states.
It is legal in the US and India, with some exceptions.
Recent changes to legislation in India
now exculde gay couples from accessing surrogates there.
In the US, it costs more than $150,000.
Unaffordable for most,
tough adoption laws here
make it near impossible for gay couples to go down that path.
But there's a new option:
Thailand, attracting at least 500 Australians in the past year.
The business of made-to-order babies there is booming.
So, we had two surrogates.
We were going into it hoping to get a biological child each
but when the results came back
we found out that one of the surrogates were pregnant
and other one wasn't pregnant.
James and Mikey flew over,
gave sperm which was injected into their donors' eggs,
before embryos were implanted into their surrogates.
Provided by their agency of choice,
the boys flew back nine months later for the birth.
It took six weeks before they could leave with their little girl.
With the surrogates, they gave us a lot of information.
Basically, you know, a whole profile of their medical history
and just down to personality traits and everything.
And when we flew over we got to meet them both
before the whole process started,
which was quite an amazing experience. It was beautiful.
A trip to Thailand to start your family
sounds like the perfect solution
but it's not as simple as it may seem.
It's an unregulated industry vulnerable to exploitation.
Thip lives in this single room that she shares with three others
in a Bangkok suburb of welfare housing.
She's invited me to speak with her and a friend, Pree,
also a surrogate currently carrying for an Australian couple.
Thip and Pree are just two of thousands of "wombs for hire".
In Thailand they do it for the money.
The girls refused to tell me who their agencies are
nor will they reveal their own identities,
fearing they'll be out of work.
The entire process from sperm, eggs, embryo to birth
will cost around $50,000.
It's unclear how much of that goes to the surrogates.
Most agencies advertise that they pay around $10-15,000
but the girls claim that's often not the case.
And these girls have good reason to be concerned.
In the back streets of Bangkok
there's a sinister world of black market babies unfolding.
Jurgen Thomas is the international director of Alliance AntiTraffic.
Last year, alongside police,
Jurgen's organisation raided Bay 101's Bangkok headquarters,
a gated two-storey house in a quiet suburb.
They rescued 15 women,
all Vietnamese lured in with the promise of legitimate work
but kept at the house and impregnated against their will.
The girls were operated by doctors, that's for sure.
We have suspicion that some doctors
were knowing that they were working in an illegal way.
New agencies are popping up daily.
More international are flying in to "rent a womb".
All right under the nose of authorities.
All the agencies of our network was pushing not to give up the law.
So, the law has not been enforced so far
but it will reduce the risk of exploitation.
Will it eliminate it? I'm not sure, I don't think so.
It's no secret, the trade in human life here is thriving.
There's hundreds of agencies advertising their services online.
NewLife Thailand, a popular choice for Australian gay couples,
offered up two of their surrogates to meet with me
on the condition it was not at their clinic.
Both surrogates look to their minder before answering any of my questions.
India used to be the hot spot.
Now it's Thailand.
If regulation does roll out here,
it's likely this made-to-order baby industry
will simply move to the next vulnerable country in the region.
There are dodgy agencies and there are reputable agencies also.
So, it's about doing your research
and that was number one priority for us
because we didn't want the surrogates
to be treated in any ill manner at all.
In the 2011-2012 financial year
there was 459 Australian citizenship applications
made for children born in Thailand,
a trend that's steadily increasing.
But some Australian states don't allow
children born to surrogates overseas back into the country,
with up to two years' imprisonment in some cases.
So, how did James and Mikey get their daughter home?
It was a huge risk flying back to where we are from in Australia
but we took the risk and we made it home just fine.
Effectively by law James' and Mikey's daughter
doesn't solely belong to them.
The Thai surrogate is listed as the mother on the birth certificate
and because of that she remains the legal guardian.
In you get.
Coming back through Customs in Australia
the Commonwealth could theoretically dob in the parents
from prohibited states and they'd be prosecuted.
There have been cases where people have done surrogacy in Thailand
who have been prosecuted.
But people are taking that risk, we take that risk,
and, you know, we've got the best result possible.
If James and Mikey go to the courts in their state
to seek full parental rights down the track,
they could be charged as criminals
and potentially lose their little girl.
We do plan on getting parental rights in the future when the time is right.
And we do plan on getting another sibling for Charley.
Laws to govern surrogacy arrangements in Thailand
are currently being debated in Thai parliament.
In Australia, pressure is mounting
to have commercial surrogacy legalised
so couples like James and Mikey don't have to look overseas
and, in turn, risk imprisonment by breaking the law.
I guess we just wanted to get the message out there
to other people, other families, other couples,
that have troubles, that it's doable
and you can do it and we did it.
And we got a good result. We got a beautiful baby girl.