A woman who was born via surrogate is speaking out about how it affected her and her childhood, and why she wants surrogacy to be banned.
Olivia Maurel (named Olivia Auriol in a previous Live Action News article) wrote an op-ed for the Daily Mail, which opened with her confusion about why her birth certificate said she had been born in Kentucky. Her family wasn’t American, she explained, and she had no connections to the place. Her mother had lied to her, so she didn’t know the truth until later: she was born to a surrogate. Maurel shared her story with Allie Beth Stuckey in a video released a month ago:
“Mere seconds after I was born, I had been rapidly removed from the woman who had become pregnant with me — using her own eggs — and had carried me for nine months,” she wrote. “Rather than being placed in my biological mother’s arms to be nurtured and adored, I was handed over to a man and woman who had, put simply, paid an awful lot of money for me.”
She went on to call surrogacy a “profoundly painful experience” which severs the connections between mother and child. And despite growing up extremely privileged, Maurel said she struggled to bond with her mother.
“My experiences have led me to conclude that surrogacy is nothing short of cruel — an immoral act that can cause lifelong damage,” she wrote.
“Little wonder, perhaps, that I have such unhappy memories of my childhood. Even as a young child, I had a sense that something was ‘off’ in my family. My French parents were very wealthy, and we split our time between Palm Beach in Florida and the South of France, living in fabulous homes, with a full complement of nannies and staff,” she explained. “My education was the best money could buy; we went on the sort of holidays most people could only dream of. Materially, I wanted for nothing. But emotionally it was a different story.”
READ: Three states prohibit paid surrogacy, and this is a good thing. Here’s why.
Maurel said she was rarely cared for by her parents, questioning, “Why, you might wonder, when my parents went to such lengths to have me, did I not feel showered with love?”
Eventually, she did her own research and realized the circumstances of her birth. “The realization that I had been lied to all my life sent me spiraling out of control as I tried to blot out my feelings,” she said. “My dark worries were kept to myself; I never spoke to my parents about this. That would have necessitated a closeness that just didn’t exist.”
She eventually became self-destructive, depressed, and suicidal. But with time, Maurel was able to heal from the trauma. She got married and had children of her own. With a DNA test, she was able to come into contact with her biological family, including her mother.
“We began to exchange messages. At first, I felt such anger. I wanted to ask her: ‘Why did you keep five of your children and sell me? Why wasn’t I good enough to keep?’” she said. “Instead, though, I asked her favourite colour. Purple. Same as me. She sent me pictures of herself pregnant with me and I felt suddenly connected. She looked just like me: the eyes, the hair, the jawline. That was my mother all right. It was the first time I’d looked like a relative. She told me that every year on my birthday she thought about me and said a prayer.”
Though she didn’t make a lasting relationship with her birth mother, Maurel has kept in contact with other members of her biological family, and she has since become an outspoken advocate for an end to surrogacy — even “altruistic” surrogacy, in which women aren’t supposed to be paid large sums of money in exchange for the use of their bodies.
“Even in countries such as the UK where commercial arrangements are banned, large sums are paid in the form of expenses,” she explained. “The reality is a woman’s body is still being rented and a baby is still going to be separated from its birth mother. In my view, it makes no difference if the surrogate is not the biological mother. It’s her womb that has nurtured the child. It’s her voice the baby has heard day in, day out, as it grows within her. It’s her scent that will soothe the child. It is her they feel bonded to. And while I feel so deeply for those who cannot have children, the sad reality is we can’t all have what we want in life. From all my research, I cannot see there is a ‘good’ version of surrogacy. In countries where it is or has been legal, it has often gone wrong.”
Sadly, her advocacy against surrogacy has caused her to become estranged from the parents who raised her. “But,” she explained, “I’m unable to stay silent while I still struggle with the traumatic legacy of surrogacy.”
