Woman refuses $10,000 to abort surrogate baby with special needs

This is a bizarre story from the US state of Connecticut which appeared on CNN today but deserves far wider distribution. 

The original account titled ‘Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort baby’ runs to 3,500 words so I have cut it to 1,400 (see here). The story has now gone viral (see here).

I run the story here without comment, but it demonstrates just how complicated things can become in a world where IVF, commercial surrogacy and abortion come together. 

It is poignant that it has come to light the day before submissions close for Fiona Bruce’s parliamentary inquiry on abortion for disability.

Crystal Kelley, 29, who already had two daughters of her own, hired herself as a commercial surrogate for $22,000 to carry a couple’s two frozen embryos. The couple already had three children and desperately wanted a fourth child, but the mother couldn't conceive.

One embryo survived after implantation but the five month ultrasound scan showed the baby had a cleft lip and palate, a cyst in the brain, and a complex heart abnormality.

The doctors explained the baby would need several heart surgeries after she was born. She would likely survive the pregnancy, but had only about a 25% chance of having a ‘normal life’. The commissioning parents wanted an abortion but Kelley felt that all efforts should be made to 'give the baby a chance'.

The parents tried to convince Kelley to change her mind and said that they had pursued surrogacy in order to minimize the risk of pain and suffering for their baby.

The two sides were at a standoff. The doctor and the genetic counselor offered an amniocentesis in the hope that by analysing the baby's genes, they could learn more about her condition.

Kelley was amenable but the parents felt that the information gained from this testing would not influence their decision to opt for abortion. They were very upset and said that Kelley ‘should try to be God-like and have mercy on the child and let her go’.

Kelly told them that they had chosen her to carry and protect this child, and that was exactly what she was going to do. She told them it wasn't their decision to play God and walked out of the room.

She then received an e-mail from Rita Kron at Surrogacy International telling her that if she chose to have the baby, the couple wouldn't agree to be the baby's legal parents.

Kelley didn't want to be the baby's mother - she'd gotten pregnant to help another family, not to have a child of her own. She was then told that the parents would pay her $10,000 to have an abortion.

The offer tested Kelley's convictions. She'd always been against abortion for religious and moral reasons, but she really needed the money.

Kron took Kelley to lunch. Kelley said, ’She painted a picture of a life of a person who had a child with special needs. She told me how it would be painful, it would be taxing, it would be strenuous and stressful. She told me it would financially drain me, that my children would suffer because of it.’

Kelley made a counter offer. ‘In a weak moment I asked her to tell them that for $15,000 I would consider going forward with the termination’, she said. But as soon as she got in the car to go home, she regretted it.

Kron let Kelley know the parents had refused to pay $15,000 but by that point, it didn't matter to Kelley -- she'd decided against abortion no matter what.

On 22 February 22 2012, six days after the fateful ultrasound, she received a letter from the parents’ lawyer saying that she was obligated to terminate the pregnancy immediately. The lawyer informed her that she had  signed a contract, agreeing to ‘abortion in case of severe fetal abnormality’ and was in breach of contract.

If she did not abort, the parents would sue her to get back the fees they'd already paid her -- around $8,000 -- plus all of the medical expenses and legal fees.

Kelley found a lawyer who was willing to take on her case free of charge who  explained that no matter what the contract said, she couldn't be forced to have an abortion. She wrote back to the couple’s lawyer saying that ‘abortion is off the table and will not be considered under any circumstance’.

The couple’s lawyer then phoned telling Kelley’s lawyer that the parents had changed their minds and now planned to exercise their legal right to take custody of their child -- and then immediately after birth surrender her to the state of Connecticut. She would become a ward of the state.

Kelley couldn't stand the thought of the baby in foster care but was advised by her lawyer that under Connecticut law she'd likely lose in court.

Her only option was to move to another state where, under a different law, where she and not the genetic parents, would be considered the baby's legal mother. That place was 700 miles away.

On 11 April 11, in her seventh month of pregnancy, Kelley and her daughters left for Michigan.

She chose Michigan because of its laws, but also its medicine: she'd been doing research on the baby's condition, and concluded CS Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan had one of the best pediatric heart programs in the country.

When she arrived, she found an inexpensive summer sublet from a University of Michigan student and applied for Michigan Medicaid. She made appointments with a high-risk pregnancy specialist and a pediatric cardiologist.

There was one thing left to do: She had to decide if she would keep the baby. She was a single mother with no job and no permanent place to live, but she'd grown emotionally attached to the life inside her, and some days she wanted to keep her. She finally decided she wasn't the right person to raise the child but through a support group found a couple who were willing to adopt.

But about one month before the baby's due date, the original parents filed in Connecticut Superior Court for parental rights. They wanted to be the legal parents with their names on the birth certificate. The legal papers included a stunning admission: the wife was not the baby's genetic mother -- they'd used an anonymous egg donor.

The case had now become very complicated. The lawyers were still negotiating about who would be the legal parents when the baby was born on 25 June.  Three weeks later, the two sides struck a deal: The father agreed to give up his paternal rights as long as he and his wife could keep in touch with the adoptive family about the baby's health.  Since then, the couple has visited the baby and the father has held her.

The baby's medical problems turned out to be much more extensive than the ultrasound at Hartford Hospital had revealed. She had a birth defect called holoprosencephaly, where the brain fails to completely divide into distinct hemispheres. She also has heterotaxy, which means many of her internal organs, such as her liver and stomach, are in the wrong places. She has at least two spleens, neither of which works properly. Her head is very small, her right ear is misshapen, she has a cleft lip and a cleft palate, and a long list of complex heart defects, among other problems.

‘Baby S’, now nine months old, has a long road in front of her. She's already had one open-heart surgery and surgery on her intestines, and in the next year she'll need one or two more cardiac surgeries in addition to procedures to repair her cleft lip and palate. Later in childhood she'll need surgeries on her jaw and ear and more heart surgeries.

Her adoptive parents, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their family's privacy, know Baby S  might not be with them for long. The cardiac procedures she needs are risky, and her heterotaxy and holoprosencephaly, though mild, carry a risk of early death, according to doctors. If Baby S. does survive, there's a 50% chance she won't be able to walk, talk or use her hands normally.

Her adoptive parents know some people look at her and see a baby born to suffer -- a baby who's suffering could have been prevented with an abortion. But that's not the way they see it. They see a little girl who's defied the odds, who constantly surprises her doctors with what she's able to do -- make eye contact, giggle at her siblings, grab toys, eye strangers warily.

Kelley says, ‘I can't tell you how many people told me that I was bad, that I was wrong, that I should go have an abortion, that I would be damned to hell.’

But in the end, she feels like she did the right thing. ‘No one else was feeling this pregnancy the way that I was. No one else could feel her kicking and moving around inside,’ she said. ‘I knew from the beginning that this little girl had an amazing fighting spirit, and whatever challenges were thrown at her, she would go at them with every ounce of spirit that she could possibly have. No matter what anybody told me, I became her mother.’

Surrogacy raises complex ethical issues

A recent BBC News report, ‘Womb for rent: A tale of two mothers’, highlights the fact that the high cost of surrogacy in Europe and the US means that many Western women are outsourcing pregnancy abroad. The BBC World Service follows two women, Carolina and Sonal, as they come to terms with the emotional costs of surrogacy.

Carolina is an Irish woman unable to bear a child as a result of surgery for cancer of the cervix. Sonal is an Indian woman married to a vegetable vendor earning just £21 per month who agrees to carry Carolina’s child in exchange of a payment of £4,200 which will enable her to live more comfortably and provide education for her children.

The case is the tip of a growing iceberg of international surrogacy arrangements. On the surface it seems to be a win/win negotiation – one woman gets a much wanted child and another receives money for her children’s education – but beneath the surface it raises many complex ethical and moral questions.

Surrogacy literally means ‘taking the place of someone else’ and a surrogate mother carries a baby on behalf of another couple (often termed the ‘commissioning couple’) having agreed to surrender the child to them after birth.

Surrogacy is not illegal in the UK but surrogacy arrangements are not enforceable in law either and a child born as a result of surrogacy is legally the child of the surrogate mother, not the commissioning couple, even though one or possibly even both of them may be the baby’s biological parents through egg and/or sperm donation.

It’s an offence in the UK to advertise either that one is looking for, or is willing to be, a surrogate mother and any commercial interest in the arrangement is illegal. ‘Necessary expenses’ only can be reimbursed.

A similar situation operates in Ireland although surrogacy is illegal in other European countries like Germany, France and Italy. However in developing countries like India the laws are much more lax.

Once a surrogate mother has given up a baby to the commissioning couple, that couple then apply for a court ‘parental order’ which makes the child theirs. However if the surrogate mother doesn’t wish to part with the baby then there is effectively nothing the commissioning couple can do about it.

Surrogacy raises many issues from a Christian perspective. First there is the issue of exploitation, especially with international surrogacy arrangements where a rich couple from the West pay a large amount of money to a woman, often living in poverty, who must then endure the risks of carrying a pregnancy in developing world conditions. Then there is the commodification of childbirth. As Christians we believe that children are gifts of God whose welfare must be paramount. They are not commodities who can be bought and sold.

Third there are the complexities of family relationships to consider. There is, on the one hand, the emotional cost of parting with the baby whom you have carried throughout pregnancy and then questions of identity that the child might have later with respect to whom his or her real parents, brothers or sisters, or relatives really are. Not to mention issues of custody and inheritance rights.

Finally there is the question of whether surrogacy somehow breaches the integrity of the marriage bond. God’s plan for marriage is that of an exclusive monogamous, heterosexual, lifelong intimate relationship where children are brought up by parents to whom they are biologically related within families. The baby being carried by the surrogate mother may or may not be biological related to her and may be biologically related only to one of the two members of the commissioning couple.

Surrogacy is very different from adoption in that a child with confused parentage is being deliberately and intentionally created.

The cases of surrogacy described in the Bible also raise big questions for us about the wisdom of surrogacy for society and family relationships. Abraham’s wife Sarah used Hagar as a surrogate mother and Jacob’s wives Leah and Rachel used Zilpah and Bilhah respectively.

But in both cases the surrogacy arrangements were embarked upon out of impatience a lack of trust in God’s promises. And there were ramifications for generations to come. The resultant intra-family hostility and conflict should ring loud warning bells for us. It is a sobering thought that, had Abraham been more patient and trusting, Ishmael, and hence Islam, might never have originated!

Having said that, every child born by whatever means is infinitely precious in the sight of God and worthy of love, protection and care.

The elephant in the room of course with the whole issue of surrogacy is perhaps why commissioning couples don’t simply adopt. And this brings us to the wider question of why there are so few babies under a year of age available for adoption in this country. I have recently highlighted that there is one baby adoption in England and Wales for every 2,235 abortions so our perhaps our efforts should be directed to restricting abortion thereby making more babies available for adoption. There are also many children with special needs in foster care or in residential care homes who are needing adoptive parents.

Surrogacy raises many issues and there are solutions to childlessness that don’t involve negotiating its stormy waters.