A Wisconsin judge stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy by comparing a gay couple's use of surrogates to father a baby boy to "human trafficking" and effectively making the child an orphan.
"The child here was a gift from another couple, made possible by payment to an agency and to a mother," Dane County Circuit Judge James Troupis told stunned couple Jay Timmons and Rick Olson.
"Can any such agreement be made without violating human trafficking laws?''
Troupis, an appointee of Gov. Scott Walker who has since resigned, denied the couple parentage and stripped the surrogate mom of parental rights,
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
The shock ruling effectively left the baby an orphan.
Another Dane County judge has reversed Troupis' ruling, calling it "unduly harsh" and "weird."
But not before Timmons, 54, and Olson, 49 — who've been married since 2008 and have two daughters through surrogacy — had to shell out $400,000 in legal fees, the newspaper says.
"We were frightened to death, first and foremost, if Jacob was taken away, how we would tell the girls, who fell hopelessly in love with their brother from the second they saw him," Timmons told the Journal Sentinel.
"We were afraid to fall in love with our own child."
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