I feel for women who can’t have children. But we can’t all have what we want in life
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. I want to believe her, but am not sure I do. Those things are easy to say to a person desperate to hear them.
More than anything, I wanted to know about my birth.
I learned that my birthday was chosen for me — the pregnancy had been induced so I arrived on
December 10, a date that fitted in with my parents’ travel plans. Even my arrival was contractual and unnatural.
My birth mother was asked if she wanted to hold me and says she told the midwife: ‘No, I can’t. Because if I do I know I’ll never let her go.’ Instead, I was taken away by the nurse and she never saw me again.
After a few weeks, our messages petered out. I don’t think we’ll be in touch again.
Sadly, I believe she suffers with mental health issues and has disconnected relationships with all of her children.
That said, I have an ongoing relationship with my cousin, her mother (my aunt) and my halfsiblings. They have become the family I always wanted and I hope one day we can all get together in the flesh.
At last, after decades of suspicion, I had absolute proof of what had happened to me.
Yet I didn’t confront my parents. I felt as if I would be spitting in their faces somehow.
They paid a lot of money to have me — commercial surrogacy can run into six-figure sums — they had raised me and I still felt a loyalty towards them. I had hoped that knowing all would bring me closure. Instead, hearing the truth plunged me into a depression and I was forced again to seek psychological help.
The more I reeled from my discovery, the more I realised I had to use my experiences to help other people.
Last year, I posted a video on TikTok which led to me becoming involved with the campaign that calls for the universal abolition of surrogacy. I ended up telling my story at an international conference on surrogacy held at the parliament of the Czech Republic. My speech went viral.
I’ve been moved to tears by the messages I have had from women who tell me how deeply they regret their decisions to be surrogates and how they pine for the babies they gave up.
We can only protect women like them — and the babies they have — if we ban all forms of surrogacy, including so-called altruistic surrogacy, where the surrogate is not paid a fee for carrying a child, as is the case in Ireland.
After much thought, I have concluded that altruistic surrogacy is a myth.
Even in countries such as Ireland where commercial arrangements are banned, large sums are paid in the form of expenses.
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.
For example, Thailand banned surrogacy for international intended parents completely in 2015 after a high-profile case where an Australian couple hired a surrogate who gave birth to twins, a healthy girl and a boy with Down’s Syndrome.
The couple took the girl home and left the impoverished mother to care for the boy.
Last month I heard about one British agency that offers financial incentives to potential surrogates: Apple watches, theme park tickets, gourmet meal kits, even sex toys.
I knew the minute I started to speak out publicly I would become estranged from my parents.
Sadly, that’s exactly what has happened. They see their grandchildren but we don’t speak any more. In a way, it’s a continuation of the awkwardness and distance that has always been there. That said, I love them and don’t bear a grudge.
But I’m unable to stay silent while I still struggle with the traumatic legacy of surrogacy.
‘The distance has always been there with my parents’