Renate Klein - Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out

First published by Spinifex Press, 2019

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Copyright on Introduction and Afterword: Jennifer Lahl, Melinda Tankard Reist and Renate Klein, 2019.

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[Surrogacy] is not only a desire to raise a child, but also a demand that the mother be absent

Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Being and Being Bought

For love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Signing the Paper in Blood
Cathy (Canada)

Cathy agrees to be a surrogate for a gay couple and almost loses her life after giving birth to three premature babies.

The Biggest Mistake of My Life
Oxana (Georgia)

Oxana thinks that surrogacy will give her a chance to earn money, but then faces the devastation of surrendering a daughter with whom she has established a close bond.

Anonymous No More: How I Was Groomed to Be a Multiple Egg Donor
Maggie (USA)

As a nave 21-year-old, Maggie was an easy target for a ruthless egg donor recruiter, unaware of the health risks entailed. She is now paying for the consequences of years of donation, facing terminal breast cancer.

Once They Found out I Didnt Have the Perfect Baby, I Was Disposable
Britni (USA)

After four children of her own, Britni becomes a surrogate to help a couple, but when the twins that result are found to have abnormalities, she is pressured to abort and left to fend for herself as she faces psychological and physical trauma.

No Right to Know
Natascha (Russia)

Natascha bought a car with the money earned from surrogacy but cannot say how much she earned. She had no say in who the parents of the baby would be, no control over contact with the child, and no idea what has happened to the eggs she donated.

Bitter Family Ties: Will I Ever See My Son Again?
Odette (Australia)

Odette acts as a surrogate for her cousin but the agreement goes wrong almost from the start and ends in a protracted painful battle.

When My Surrogacy Became My Nightmare
Denise (USA)

Surrogacy for a Chinese couple goes wrong when twins are born and one turns out to be not Chinese, but the genetic child of the surrogate mother and her partner.

I Am an Incubator
Natalia (Russia)

Natalia relocates to Moscow to be a surrogate for a wealthy Russian couple, and wants it all to be over as soon as possible to resume her own life with some much-needed money.

Exploited, Lied to, Financially Ruined and Devastated
Kelly (USA)

Kelly undergoes surrogacy three times for two couples overseas and one in the USA and ends up almost dying in childbirth and with PTSD as a result.

Surrogacy Broke up Our Family
Rob (Australia)

Rob tells the story of his partner Bevs devastating altruistic surrogacy for a friend that turned their lives into a nightmare.

My Heart Is Hurting
Ujwala, Dimpy and Sarala (India)

Ethnographer Sheela Saravanan tells the heartbreaking stories of three poverty-stricken Indian women. They needed the money but didnt know surrogacy would hurt them so much.

Messing with My Body, Messing with My Mind
Marie Anne (UK)

Marie Anne wants to help her cousin have a baby, but not only does surrogacy destroy their relationship, it results in Marie Anne losing her career, and her own children too, because her mental health is destroyed by the process.

Surrogacy Is Business
Elena (Romania)

For Elena, surrogacy is a chance to put food on the table and eke out a living.

Left Alone with Exploding Breasts and an Exploding Heart
Michelle (USA)

It is only after being a surrogate three times that Michelle realises that striving for money and self-fulfillment through surrogacy is a delusion.

A Selfless Donor
Viktoria (Hungary)

Viktoria has donated over 70 eggs, and knows little of the result, besides that two girls have been born. This knowledge brings her a mixture of joy and despair, coupled with the health problems she is now facing as a result of her donations.

When Good Intentions Were Met with Racism and Hate
Toni (USA)

When Toni, a black American woman, acts as a surrogate for a white couple, she realizes, too late, that the child she is carrying will be growing up in a house full of hate.

In the 21st century, reproductive marketplaces are expanding globally. Renewed debate has taken place about the commercialisation and regulation of the baby-making industry. The public conversation has been captured by those with vested interests; doctors, IVF clinics, lawyers, counsellors and pro-surrogacy advocacy groups all want a piece of the lucrative pie.

But what happens to the voices of the other people involved; the so-called surrogate mother, the egg donor, and the child that is grown in the birth mothers body from her own flesh and blood only to become a take-away baby and given to strangers who from now on are considered her or his parents?

Surrogate mothersnanny or a house painter. Why not rent a uterus? the editorial asked (Smith 2013).

In Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out, we challenge this dominant narrative around surrogacy and egg donation and look behind the glitzy advertising and spin of third-party fertility brokers profiteering from the marketing of pregnancy and birth. We do this in the most compelling way possible by bringing together the accounts of women and one man who is the partner of a so-called surrogate mother whose accounts disrupt the happy surrogacy stories.