Posted on 03/05/2013 1:46:24 AM PST by Pinkbell
The unforeseen consequences of any surrogacy were laid bare when a woman paid $22,000 to have a Connecticut couple's baby fled across the country to save the unborn child's life when they demanded she abort the pregnancy.
Five months into a surrogate pregnancy last year, Crystal Kelley discovered that the child she was carrying had significant abnormalities - beginning a tragic and heartbreaking ordeal for her and the conflicted parents.
While most surrogacies hope to have only happy endings, Crystal, 29, was hit with a series of legal actions that caused a secretive flight to Michigan that ended with the child being born and adopted by neither her nor the intended parents.
In August of 2011, Crystal, who has two children of her own fell into financial difficulties and offered her services through an established surrogacy agency to a couple who desperately wanted a fourth child but couldn't have one.
They paid the standard fee of over $20,000 to Crystal and then an embryo the pair had left over from a previous round of in-vitro fertilization was used on October 8th.
Just 10-days later Crystal fell pregnant and so thrilled were the couple that they demanded to be as involved as possible during the next nine months.
The would-be mother phoned daily to offer morning sickness sympathy and gave Crystal and her two daughters Christmas presents and even paid out the monthly surrogate fee early to help her out.
'She said, 'I want you to come to us with anything because you're going to be part of our lives forever,' said Kelley to CNN.
In February though, everything changed when ultrasound tests began to show that the baby was not developing as was hoped.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Ping!
So it appears that it was the parents to be that were imperfect.
My wife and I have been married for 20 years. We will never have a child. We tried and tried but we will never know what our children would have looked like. So we are trying to adopt.
I don’t think I could abort a pregnancy unless the kid had no head or something. But even then once you are using someone else’s uterus all the rules go out the window.
“three previous premature births that left two of their children with medical problems” So they had to have a fourth? Seems a waste to try for a fourth when it’s pretty obvious you’re having trouble producing viable offspring already. Oh well, it’s their money. But still, $20,000 is private adoption money. There are thousands of kids with no parents just sitting out there.
Ping!
They should go ask actor Stacy Keach about a cleft palate and see if he thinks his life was worth it.
She has a birth defect called holoprosencephaly, where the brain doesn't 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 in her body.
Her head is small, her right ear is misshapen, she has a cleft lip and a cleft palate, and a long list of complex heart defects.
She's already had one open-heart surgery and surgery on her intestines, and over the next year she'll have one or two more cardiac surgeries.
If the child, named Baby S for legal reasons, does survive, there's a 50 per cent chance she won't be able to walk or talk.
She does have a lot of severe health problems, but nothing could justify killing her in the womb. No health problem justifies abortion. You wouldn't kill a born child with health problems, so you also wouldn't kill an unborn child.
This, over a cleft palate? Grrr.
Unfortunately more than that. See post 7.
Half the comments at the Daily Mail are enough to give me a coronary.
Since the “conflicted parents” seem to be the ones suffering maybe they should be aborted... yes, that’s sarcasm.
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> “three previous premature births that left two of their children with medical problems” So they had to have a fourth? Seems a waste to try for a fourth when it’s pretty obvious you’re having trouble producing viable offspring already.
Some people just don’t know when enough is enough.
We had a friend who was born blind. Her mother and father were both teachers in the local school system. I though that was bad enough until I met her sister, also born blind. I later met her other siblings, also born blind. Apparently her idiot parents weren’t content to just bring one or two blind children into the world, they kept doing it until they had five blind children.
the parents were stunned to discover that only Crystal could arrange and go through with an abortion.
Rita Kron from Surrogacy International explained to Crystal the realities of bringing up a disabled child and said the parents would pay her $10,000 to have the termination.
Crystal refused - demanding $15,000 to have an abortion.
So much for her being painted as a hero. She just wanted more money.
Doctors Within Borders? From what I’ve read in the article, the baby is having her medical needs met. Discounting Detroit, Michigan is not a third-world nation.
Yes, I see your point, better to be in a grave than to be blind. /sac
Good for her!
what a quaint (English?) expression, “fell pregnant”!?
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