We often talked about surrogacy focusing mainly on the ethical aspect and the deep pain that the two parties involved, mother and child, experience since it intentionally cuts the natural bond that is created during pregnancy between the mother and the child.

Actually, the physical and psychological risks that this practice implies are many and those who have economic or personal interests in not stopping this practice will never tell you about it. We at Steadfast instead, want to tell you everything because no woman deserves to undergo such dangerous treatments just to satisfy the selfish desires of others, moreover by leveraging on her economic needs.

First of all, due to the high costs associated with surrogacy and the desire to increase the probabilities of success, more embryos are often implanted in the mother’s womb, which most likely entails the risk of a cesarean section and longer hospitalisation, gestational diabetes, foetus growth retardation and premature birth.

Several studies have shown an increase in NICU hospitalisation for surrogate births, compared to births from natural conception.
In most cases, eggs from a donor are implanted in the woman. Studies show that there is a triple risk of developing hypertension and pre-eclampsia in them.

Not only, since the woman’s body does not recognise nor the egg neither the sperm that formed the embryo, it is bombarded with anti-rejection drugs, which have a very strong impact on the body, with possible tumour consequences, even for the unborn child .
And then ? Then, there can also be death.

As with Michelle Reaves, wife and mother of two young children who lived in San Diego, California. Michelle was pregnant, surrogate mother for the second time for the same family when she died tragically, on January 15, 2020, from a highly fatal complication, amniotic embolism.

Or Crystal, who died on 22 February 2017 from complications related to premature labour of a surrogate pregnancy.
Following a blood transfusion received after a bleeding, she was discharged from the hospital despite not feeling well and then dying from embolism at home. She left her husband and two children, too.

In the United States there is no obligation to trace and collect data on surrogate mothers, therefore the real number of surrogate pregnancies ending with the death of the mother and / or children is not known.
It is not in the interest of the big surrogacy agencies to tell the true number, for Crystal the agency, the CPS (Centre for Surrogate Parenting), had even categorically prohibited talking about the case. For those who, in anonymity, have told their story, Crystal’s premature hospital discharge is not a coincidence neither. A pregnancy with problems involves additional costs for the “parents” of intention, which the agency wants to be kept quiet.
Better to rush things and also list that pregnancy among the successful  ones. But that was not the case.

EMMANUELE DI LEO