Brittney Pearson was a mother of four and 22 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer—a tragic enough situation. To make a bad situation worse, though, the Sacramento native was pregnant as a surrogate mother for a gay couple.
Upon being informed of the cancer diagnosis two weeks later, the two men demanded that Pearson abort the child.
While the baby was still in Pearson’s body, she had full rights under California’s bodily autonomy laws. But the intended parents attempted to coerce her to have an abortion with financial penalties or lawsuits.
Despite these threats, Pearson refused to terminate her pregnancy. She carried the baby as long as she could before having to begin chemotherapy.
After all, Pearson also had to keep herself alive for her own four children.
At around 25 weeks, Pearson went into induced labor. The intended fathers, who were contractually and legally recognized as the child’s parents by California law, decided to withhold lifesaving care and let the infant die.
Last month, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced legislation to prevent surrogate mothers such as Pearson from being forced into abortions.
Ogles’ bill responds to cases such as those of Pearson, where women face threats of legal action or financial penalties from intended parents who demand abortions. The legislation aims to curb the destructive practices of the unregulated industry that is surrogacy.
When many Americans think of the word “surrogate,” they may imagine an altruistic lady who agrees to help a slightly older infertile couple—a scenario in the vein of Hagar and Abraham in the Old Testament.
However, just as much anguish came from Hagar and Abraham’s actions, the modern surrogacy industry is rife with tragedy, pain, and confusion. Take the story of Melissa Cook, for example.
Cook gave birth to triplets eight years ago. Today, she doesn’t know where they are.
In 2015, Cook signed a surrogacy contract that came with $30,000. The surrogacy agency, citing client confidentiality, provided her with virtually no information about the family she thought she was helping.
It was only after Cook persisted that she discovered that instead of acting as a surrogate mother for a couple, she would be doing so for a 51-year-old single man who was deaf, blind, and living in his parents’ basement in Georgia.
Cook still didn’t know the man’s name.
“The warning bells rang, but I thought, ‘Why should a disability prevent someone from becoming a parent?’ So I signed the contract,” she recalled for the Daily Mail.
Signing the surrogacy contract terminated all of Cook’s parental rights.
Later, after the deaf and blind intended father found out that Cook had three viable embryos inside her, he sent her a text saying he wasn’t sure he could “have three kids.”
“Can you think about aborting?” the man asked.
He was right that he couldn’t manage three kids, let alone one. Perhaps he couldn’t even take care of himself.
Nonetheless, commercial surrogacy allows anyone to get a child, without referrals from family or friends, home visits, or psychological evaluations—all required in normal adoption processes.
When Cook spoke to her doctors about the situation, they told her that they could inject one of the triplets to induce death. The dead child could stay in her womb alongside his brothers until they eventually were born.
To avoid this gruesome option, Cook offered to take care of the third son herself.
Ultimately, the unborn baby was not aborted, but Cook had to give all three babies to the Georgia resident anyway.
Her concern grew with court documents in which the deaf and blind man’s sister described him as “paranoid,” prone to “frequent anger fits,” and having “a history of being cruel to animals.” Court documents also noted that the man’s heroin-addicted nephew allegedly sold drugs out of the house at the time.
At one hearing, the judge said: “What is going to happen to these children once they are handed over to C.M., that’s none of my business. That’s not part of my job.”
Cook wasn’t allowed to have anyone with her during birth, per the orders of the deaf and blind man who was 2,000 miles away. To stifle any natural postpartum bonding, Cook didn’t get to see her children or breastfeed them.
After the triplets spent a few weeks in the hospital, a team of nurses and a doctor flew back to Georgia with the disabled intended father.
Stories such as Melissa Cook’s and Brittney Pearson’s aren’t politically correct to share. The surrogacy industry operates with little to no oversight or accountability.
Americans are led to believe that surrogacy is an altruistic gift when it actually is an unaccountable, Wild West industry that prioritizes adult wishes over the needs and rights of children.
As Cook told the Daily Mail: “You always hear the happy stories, but people are never told horror stories like mine.”
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