By MICHAELA GLASS 

A closed-door meeting in Cambodia last month discussed a legal framework for commercial surrogacy in the kingdom.

Commercial surrogacy, where prospective parents pay a woman to carry their embryo and then hand the child over at birth, is illegal in Australia. However, this hasn’t stopped many couples who have gone to Asian countries for "black market" babies.

Sam Everingham, the founder and global director of support organisation Families Thru Surrogacy, and his partner have two children born through Indian surrogates.

He says the Australian Government has pushed families into dangerous international deals.

“By putting in … complete bans on foreigners you tend to drive people towards a bit of a black market in this area where people will just break laws,” he says.

It is understood Australian and Cambodian government officials and human rights organisations were present at the meeting.

Last week, UN envoy Rhona Smith, who is visiting Cambodia, offered to help the country draft its first surrogacy laws, it was reported in The Cambodia Daily. 

The moves come after commercial surrogacy was outlawed in Nepal and Thailand, sparking a rise in Australian couples engaging with Cambodian agents.

A Melbourne mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, had her three children through Asian surrogates. She expects Cambodia will introduce a framework that will make the practice legal.

She says the benefits of commercial surrogacy easily outweigh the potential ethical questions.

“I can’t see any rhyme or reason why we don’t commercialise it. I guess the only thing I can think of is because it’s basically buying children,” she says.

Dr Renate Klein, co-founder of international advocacy group Stop Surrogacy Now and a former associate professor at Deakin University, says commercial surrogacy is a huge ethical problem.

“It’s a human rights violation of the women involved, the so-called surrogate, because she’s being treated as a breeder, an incubator, an oven,” she says.

Dr Klein says surrogacy is a more emotionally and medically gruelling practice than most people understand. “Surrogacy is not too dissimilar from prostitution. It’s like reproductive prostitution.”

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A ban on surrogacy in India has left many hopeful parents stranded.

A Melbourne woman who was an altruistic surrogate for a friend says being a surrogate mother was a great experience and people don’t understand how well surrogates are cared for.

“It was a really, really positive, happy experience,” the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, says.

The woman who received that child, Sharon Hall, says the Australian Government lets parents down when it comes to surrogacy options.

“We’ve got a gap here, so people look internationally, and therefore they’re going … out of desperation, for whatever arrangements that they can find that are going to deliver them the result,” she says.

Ms Hall says awareness is the key to change.

“The biggest challenge, I think, in terms of getting things changed is that it’s such a minority of people that go through surrogacy … therefore it’s not considered a big issue.”

For the Australians who have given up seeing change to surrogacy laws on home soil, countries such as Cambodia are one of their only options.