A combination of state law and media duplicity is taking the gloss off the news that a lesbian couple are expecting quintuplets in Australia, writes PÁDRAIG COLLINSin Sydney
WHEN YOUNG Irish people in Australia make headlines it is often under tragic circumstances involving alcohol and a lethal assault. So this week’s story of Rosemary Nolan, a 21-year-old Waterford woman whose Australian girlfriend is pregnant with quintuplets – a one in 60 million chance when it happens, as in this case, without the aid of IVF – provided a welcome respite and was reported around the world.
Nolan arrived in Australia in 2008. She met and settled down with Melissa Keevers, a 27-year-old. The couple quickly fell in love and decided to have a family.
Through a US company they looked at 30 donor profiles to choose who would be the father of their child. They picked a 27-year-old dark-haired law student who was said to have good teeth and eyesight and a high IQ.
Lilly, who is now a toddler, was born last year. She will never know who her father is, though, as Keevers and Nolan signed a waiver to protect his anonymity.
The couple, who live in the Queensland city of Brisbane, were so happy with Lilly that they went back to the same company, and Keevers again became pregnant with sperm from the same donor. But this time she is expecting five babies.
Though ostensibly a story of great joy, all is not as it seems.
First and foremost, Nolan will not legally be recognised as a parent of the children. As the birth mother, only Keevers will be a recognised parent in Queensland. Nolan will not be allowed to adopt the children.
Though same-sex adoption is legal in two Australian states and the Australian Capital Territory, it is banned in Queensland.
Same-sex adoption passed through the New South Wales (NSW) state parliament last month after a fractious debate in both houses. The major political parties allowed a conscience vote on the issue, and MPs were besieged with e-mails, letters, phone calls and faxes from interest groups.
Following the NSW ruling, Queensland’s minister for child safety, Phil Reeves, says that there is no plan to follow suit in his state. “The government doesn’t have any intention of changing the laws to allow same-sex couples to adopt Australian-born children.”
The majority of adoptions in Australia are of children from Asian countries, such as India, China and Vietnam, none of which allows applications from same-sex couples.
Rod Goodbun, a spokesman for Action Reform Change Queensland, an equal-rights group, believes that same-sex couples should be treated no differently from heterosexual couples. “They will share many of the same expectations in terms of forming loving relationships and starting families,” he says.
Another issue for the couple is how their story was revealed to the world. Keevers and Nolan sold their story to Woman's Day, an Australian magazine. It is not known how much they were paid for the story, but they said they were concerned about finances. "I don't know what we are going to do," Keevers told the magazine. "We have just been given an eviction notice on our house because the owner is selling. We would love to buy a place, but who is going to give a mortgage to a couple on one wage with six kids?"
The deal with Woman's Dayis an exclusive one, and the only other interview the couple have done was with a television station owned by the same media company.
Woman's Dayis aimed squarely at the broad end of the market, with a staple menu of diet tips, celebrity gossip and plastic- surgery-gone-wrong stories. It also loves a good wedding or bonny-baby story.
Last Monday, the day it published the quintuplets story, Woman's Daywas exposed on ABC television for entirely making up a story about the recent wedding of Kate Ritchie, who played Sally in the Australian soap opera Home and Away for 20 years.
The magazine gave a description of the wedding as if the reporter had been there, but the story went to print before the wedding took place. Almost every detail was wrong, including the claim that Ray Meagher, who plays Alf Stewart in Home and Away, was a guest. He was in London at the time.
For the "wedding" picture, Woman's Dayused an old photograph of Ritchie and her husband, the former rugby league player Stuart Webb, from a sports awards ceremony. Her dark dress was Photoshopped to look white like a wedding dress, and a stock photo of the ceremony venue was used as the background.
After the wedding Ritchie and Webb released their genuine wedding photographs to the press and invited the publications that used them to make a donation to a children's cancer charity, Camp Quality. It was suggested that magazines such as Woman's Dayshould donate the equivalent of €7,000. In the event, the photographs were used by 10 publications, which donated about €200 between them.
No doubt there are many more exclusives to come from Nolan, Keevers and their family, but the couple will have to be aware that they are swimming with sharks.
