A story of a Belgian couple who fought for nearly two and half years to bring their own son home from the Urkaine is currently circulating. My attention was drawn to a Belgian news story that chronicles their struggle. The video is above. (You can turn on the closed captioning for English.) The English transcript from YouTube is below the fold. One of the fathers explains:
According to the spokesperson of Foreign Affairs, this is because surrogacy is not legally regulated in Belgium. Strangely, it is not forbidden, but it is not allowed either!
They weren't alerted to this beforehad, but the couple went the surrogacy route because their research indicated:
Gay couples can legally adopt children in Belgium since 2006 but Peter and Laurent hear that it is very difficult in reality. For both domestic and foreign children are same-sex adoptive parents almost never accepted.
Even a DNA test confirming the father's paternity seems to have had little effect on speeding up the resolution of this case, as it dragged on for more than a year after, while the child languished in an orphanage.
I think, it's an important demonstration how LGBTs, the world over, must struggle in gray areas of the law that afford them so little protection and advantages others for granted. The video is above, the English transcript is below the fold. This couple's story is so heartbreaking, but bearable, knowing that there is a ultimately, happy ending.
Image may be NSFW.
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From MSNBC: Laurent Ghilain, second from right, holds his son Samuel Ghilain as he arrives at Zaventem airport in Brussels on Saturday.
Below is an English transcript from YouTube:
Can you imagine? Bearing a child and not being allowed to see it grow up? It is happening to Laurent, for already 2 years and 2 months. Laurent is the biological father of Samuel, a boy conceived by a surrogate mother in Ukraine. That was the only way he and his (legally married) husband Peter saw it possible to make a child.
It seemed to them a legally watertight solution, but this was not the case with the Belgian authorities. Laurent and Peter are trying to move heaven and earth to bring their child to our country (Belgium). The whole thing would cost them 25.000 EUR, but it has already left them 80.000 EUR poorer.
This is the story of 2 fathers, who may not be a father, apparently, A little town in the south of France, the Belgian couple Peter and Laurent moved here 2,5 years ago. Laurent started his own fitness bussiness and Peter works as a cardiologist at the local hospital
We were very well received here, although maybe you would think that in a small town in the south of France, a couple of 2 guys would not be easily accepted, but that was not at all a problem, on the contrary. For the 2 of us it was very clear we both wanted children, we have both always wanted that.
How could we fill that the desire for children? That was of course not evident.
Of course we informed ourselves first about adoption in Belgium. We had friends that had tried that but never succeeded, and they were on a waiting list for more than 3 years! Gay couples can legally adopt children in Belgium since 2006 but Peter and Laurent hear that it is very difficult in reality. For both domestic and foreign children are same-sex adoptive parents almost never accepted. So then we informed ourselves about surrogate mothers, first in our circle of friends and family.
There were girlfriends that had once said: "if you ever want children, we can always talk about that". We talked about it, and it of course it was not that easy, so nothing was really possible that way. Then we started to look for countries where it is possible, where there are programs for surrogate mothers the USA, Ukraine, India, ..
Ultimately the couple chooses for Ukraine, because they have the most trust an in organisation over there. An egg is fertilized by IVF with sperm from Laurent, and implanted in the surrogate mother.
On November 24, 2008 their son Samuel is born!
We arrived there at 10:00 a.m. We immediatly went to see him at the hospital. Beforehand I had a lot of questions: How will it be for the first time? How will I react? But the first time you take your child into your arms, you forget all about that, and everything goes very naturally. It was paradise, we followed his rhythm, everything was perfect!
And the intention was that everything would remain perfect.. We met the surrogate mother, and we felt very empathic about her, thinking how it must be for her.. but she was very cool about it, everything was fine by her! We asked her if she would like a present from us, but she only wanted us to pay for her taxi, and that was it for her.
Everything goes according to plan, until they take their baby to the Belgian embassy in Kiev. The consul refuses to give Samuel a Belgian passport! According to the spokesperson of Foreign Affairs, this is because surrogacy is not legally regulated in Belgium. Strangely, it is not forbidden, but it is not allowed either!
People go abroad, they find themselves a surrogate mother, after 9 months the child is born and they come with their birth certificate to the embassy, and they ask for us to recognize that birth certificate. We have no legal basis to recognize the birth certificate, and on that basis we can also give no official papers to that child.
Was it naive to think that Belgium would accept a child born from a surrogate mother? Maybe.. but I had informed myself in the Belgian Embassy, and they didn't tell us that it's Belgium that's going to block it, and that they wouldn't be able to give us the papers that we needed to get Samuel to Belgium! If they told us that beforehand, we would never have started it..
Peter and Laurent are forced to hope and wait for an answer from Foreign Affairs or a Belgian court. They return home, because their jobs are waiting, and they leave Samuel in a foster family in Ukraine. The foster family were he was staying, was ok. they were expensive, 1000 EUR per month, but they were friendly.
It was a family with children, and we felt confident about that place. I have no idea who and at what point could have taken a decision, or who could have provided a solution. It was not the ambassador, not the Foreign Policy Minister,..
They're all stabbing their heads in the sand, nobody wants to compromise themselves. But we always had hope.. It wasn't until the interim (court procedure), that we first heard from the counterparty.
The prosecutor was simply devastating, when I came out of there I felt like I was a monster! That I was a selfish person and only thought of myself and never about the welfare of my son!
Meanwhile, the time is ticking away without Samuel. 2 times the case is presented in interim (Belgian court), 2 times the judge gives a negative answer.
Even with a DNA test that proves that Laurent is the father. Peter and Laurent visit Samuel a few times, but when the situation drags on for longer than one year the foster family starts to threaten them!
They said they had enough, if we couldn't get a Belgian passport, they would put Samuel anonymously on the street or in an orphanage so we would never be able to find him, and that would be the end of the story. That put us with our backs against the wall so we decided to go get him anyway.
An act of desperation, because bringing a child without official papers to Belgium, is kidnapping. The foster family didn't want to give him up because we had no official papers, so I just took him and we left.
It was after all our own son! We took him to the other side of the country, to the border with Poland. There a girlfriend was waiting for us, she would get him across the border, and we would wait for her on the other side.
But that went completely wrong! The next day we went to the police because we saw no one and we weren't able to reach anyone by phone. In hindsight, they lost their Mobile to the Police during their arrest on suspicion of child abduction and child trafficking.
They're able to bail their girlfriend out of jail for 10.000 EUR. Samuel ends up in a Ukrainian orphanage.. I've seen the footage, it seemed to be clean in the sense that each child had his own bed, clean clothes, some toys and activities, so good..
But he no longer smiled on that film, while he was actually a very open and jovial child was as we knew him! And he was cared for by people in white aprons, very sterile, no real parental figures.
I don't know it anymore. This is no way of living. Of course there is the guilt, because there is still a child in an orphanage, and that's probably our responsibility. You keep asking yourself a lot of questions. Whether it was a good decision. One wonders whether ..if we we shouldn't have done it, If it might have been better not to go through with it. Maybe we had better ignored our desire to have children.
You do not choose to be gay, but ... it's not allowed in Belgium, OK. Maybe in a few years time it is.
We hope indeed that a humanitarian solution can be found, and we certainly follow his situation closely. We are committed to it, and it's indeed very difficult to see that the child has to stay this long in an orphanage. Foreign Affairs says it can do nothing, as long as surrogacy is not legally regulated.
And without a government, (February 1, 2011: Belgium 232 days without government) everything is blocked! The Belgian court for its part, promises a verdict this month. If that's negative for the 3th time, Peter and Laurent want to bring it to the European Court.
Laurent never comes into this room.. never, never, never. I'm scared that Samuel, because of those 2 years, 1 year in a foster family, and already more than 1 year in the orphanage, that he will experience difficulties because of that.
And also that he would end up here with people that are strangers to him, that it would be once again a new situation for him. That's the worst.
That we might have to give up on him one day. To think of him. To give up before he begins to understand what's all happening around him.
That maybe he should better be adopted by another loving family. We have already said to each other: perhaps that decision forces itself upon us, if Belgium is not quick to make a decision.
Fortunately they did not give up, and last week welcomed little Samuel into their home.
But this is what marriage equality fight is all about: recognizing that LGBT families are as important, as valid as any. That the law should respect the ties that bind our families are as worthy of recognition as those that bind a man and woman.
That our interests in raising our children are valid, should be respected, in a court of law, the chambers of the legislatures, at a foreign consulate, in family court, and eventually, in the PTA meetings, in the playgroups. And society should respect our families as equally valid units of loving individuals just trying our best to get by, like any other.
It sadly too often doesn't right now. Children, as with this case, are torn from their biological parent, or from the non-biological parent they've always known.
Or, our legally wedded spouses are deported, yes, by the United States government. Until this respect is won at the highest levels of power, it will be hard for it to trickle down to the playgrounds, to the courts, to the media, to the classrooms and playgrounds.
This will end someday. Because it must. Equal protection under the law is the promise and the imperative, here in America and everywhere.
Real lives, like Samuel Ghilain's--who lived two years needlessly in an orphanage--hang in the balance.