‘womb for hire" nightmare
Doctors said they’d inject one of the triplets so he’d die. It was a horror story
I told him, the children are mine while they are in me. I’ll protect them
After Melissa Cook was offered £26,000 to be a surrogate mum, she discovered the father was single, deaf and living in his parents’ basement. Then it emerged she was carrying triplets – and he demanded she abort one of them. Her shocking story raises deeply disturbing questions about the commercial baby-making industry
BELIEVING passionately that bringing new life into the world ‘is the greatest gift you could give anyone’, Melissa Cook became a surrogate mother. ‘When I became pregnant with triplets, I was thrilled,’ she reflects. ‘I believed then that everyone has the right to be a parent.’
However, six years on, she thinks very differently. For not only did she never see the three babies after they were born, but she has no idea where they now live.
Long-running legal efforts to get access to the children have failed and she is profoundly worried that they are not safe.
‘Little did I know what a nightmare it would become,’ Melissa says, distraught. ‘It’s a nightmare that never ends. When the triplets were born, they were taken away before I could even look at them. It’s heartbreaking.’
Her story has shocked America and casts a deeply disturbing light on the surrogacy industry, which, however well regulated parts of it might be, can have devastating consequences.
The fact is that commercial surrogacy in the US has become a Wild West, where money tends to trump everything and little is done to protect mothers or the children they bring into this world if things go wrong.
Melissa’s story, too, has important lessons for Britain – not only on the dangers of changing the law to make surrogacy easier, but also because many childless couples from the UK seek children from America.
Different states have different laws, but American surrogates can receive handsome payment, whereas in Britain only expenses are allowed.
Melissa, 54, urges would-be parents to think long and hard before they consider a surrogate from across the Atlantic.
HER story began on May 31, 2015, when she signed a surrogacy agreement with a California agency, Surrogacy International. A divorcee with four of her own children, she freely admits she needed the money – and was to be paid $33,000 (£26,000).
In Britain, expenses for a surrogate typically range from £12,000 to £18,000 – not insubstantial, but leaving little or nothing as profit.
Although Melissa works as a ‘mobile notary’, travelling to clients’ homes and offices to help them with legal documents, she was not well paid. ‘As a single mum, money was tight,’ she concedes. So she had, once before, become a surrogate to a gay couple – successfully carrying a baby for them. She says: ‘It was a positive experience. One of the dads came to all my doctors’ appointments. I felt part of their family. When the baby was born I was happy to hand the little boy to his daddies.’
But Melissa says her second experience as a surrogate was nothing short of a disaster.
She admits she was concerned from the outset, saying the agency gave her minimal information about the family she thought she would be helping, citing client confidentiality. It was only when she persisted that she discovered the truth: rather than acting as a surrogate mother for a couple, she would be doing so for a 51-yearold single man who was deaf and living in his parents’ basement.
For legal reasons, the postal worker from Georgia can only be referred to as ‘C. M.’
She wished to keep an open mind, however, saying: ‘The warning bells rang but I thought, “Why should a disability prevent someone from becoming a parent?” So I signed the contract.’
Eggs from a 20-year-old donor were fertilised with sperm from the intended father, with whom she communicated only by email. Then, on August 17, 2015, three embryos were transferred into Melissa’s body.
‘I have four children of my own, but this pregnancy was far more difficult than the others,’ she continues. ‘I suffered from hypotension [low blood pressure] and was placed on medication and a special diet. I also developed gestational diabetes.’
And there was another shock to come. As is often the case with IVF procedures, more than one
fertilised embryo is implanted in the surrogate so as to maximise the chances of success.
When C.M. learned there were three viable embryos now growing inside Melissa, however, he asked her to abort one, she says.
‘He sent me a text saying, “I’m not sure I can have three kids.
Can you think about aborting?” I was like, “Are you kidding?”’
Also, court records show emails from C.M. to the clinic monitoring Melissa’s pregnancy, in which he asks staff to help him to keep the costs down.
‘Please try to make her visits [to the clinic] less often because I get a bill that costs me a lot of money… it causes me financial problems... [I can’t] afford triplets… that worries me so bad for real.’
Tears fill Melissa’s eyes as she recalls: ‘It became obvious to me that this man wasn’t capable of raising triplets.
‘He demanded I have an abortion. I didn’t want one. When I spoke to the doctors, they told me they would inject one of the triplets, who would die, but he would stay in my womb alongside his brothers until their birth.
‘It was like something from a horror story.’
The more Melissa learned about the man for whom she was bearing the children, the worse she felt.
He was taking care of his elderly parents (who have since died), both invalided. According to a sworn affidavit from the man’s sister, part of later legal action, a heroinaddicted nephew allegedly sold drugs out of the house at the time.
In court documents seen by The Mail on Sunday, C.M.’s sister describes him as ‘socially awkward’, ‘paranoid’ and prone to ‘frequent anger fits’. He also ‘has a history of being cruel to animals’.
Melissa says: ‘I became filled with anxiety. It affected my pregnancy. I could feel all three babies inside me. C.M. kept demanding I abort one of the babies. I wrote back to him saying I would keep one myself and raise it myself.
‘The agency owner, who was also his lawyer, said “These are his children” and I told him, “I don’t care. They’re mine while they are in me and I’m protecting them.”’
It is at this point that her lawyer, Harold Cassidy, who is sitting by her side during our interview, interjects. ‘The nightmare here begins at the very start of the process, because the rights of the children and the surrogate mother are not protected under American law. It’s all about who pays the bills. The constitutional rights of children are being violated and women are being exploited,’ he says, adding: ‘They are treated as nothing more than a womb for hire, a chattel to be discarded once business is concluded.’
Melissa took legal action before the babies were born. She says: ‘I was an emotional wreck. I went public because I didn’t want to abort one of the babies. As a mother, I felt protective towards them. I still do. I have never seen the boys, who are six now, but I want them to know I am here for them. My door is always open.’
The triplets were born at 30 weeks in a Los Angeles hospital on Feb
ruary 22, 2016. Melissa says: ‘They were delivered by caesarean section and there was a screen halfway down my body. I heard them but never saw them.
‘There was a guard posted at my door. I offered breast milk but was told the father declined that offer. I had a friend who wanted to be there with me in the delivery room but the doctors refused because the babies’ daddy said he didn’t want anyone else in the delivery room.’
The intended father, C.M., meanwhile, stayed at home 2,000 miles away in Georgia.
‘No one at the hospital would even tell me how they were doing.’
The babies spent weeks in hospital before a medical team of three nurses and a doctor flew back to Georgia with C.M. and the triplets.
Melissa says she eventually turned down all offers of payment from C.M. ‘because it would have felt like blood money’.
Her lawyer Harold Cassidy filed lawsuit after lawsuit in an attempt to establish her maternal rights to the babies. Melissa’s case was thrown out by the District Court of California and the Appeals Court. A request for it to be heard by the Supreme Court was denied.
‘All this has been devastating. It’s affected my own children and my boyfriend, too,’ she says. ‘I think about the triplets all the time, wondering how they are.
‘Commercial surrogacy shouldn’t be allowed. The mother has no rights. No one ever checked the home of the intended father before the triplets were born.
‘He didn’t even have to go through a psychological background check like I did. When we went to court, the judge said the contract I signed basically gave the father all rights to the children. The judge said what happens to those children is none of the court’s business. When I signed that contract, I terminated any of my parental rights.
‘During 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.”
‘I feel bad every day for those babies. I wonder what he tells them about their mother? They are six years old now. I know they will be starting to ask about where they came from. I feel so bad for them. The babies never deserved this.’
The affidavit filed by C. M.’s sister in support of Melissa’s case accused him of being an unfit parent. It claims C.M. has been known to leave the children unattended ‘for hours at a time’ and that the triplets had allegedly been obliged to eat food from a dirty floor.
His sister told the court: ‘If C.M. applied to adopt a child and a home inspection was conducted, he would never have qualified to be an adoptive parent.’
Of course, there are two sides to every story. Robert Walmsley, the lawyer who represents him and also owns Surrogacy International, denied Melissa’s claims that the children are not being cared for properly, insisting: ‘My client is a good and caring father. He loves those children. He owns his own house and the children are being very well looked after.
‘Of course, caring for triplets would be a challenge for anyone, but he’s doing a great job. He sends me pictures and videos and the children are smiling, happy and healthy. He’s a doting father and any suggestion otherwise is totally wrong.’
When asked about Melissa’s court fight, he retorts: ‘The courts backed C.M. every step of the way, as they should have done. His sister said what she did because sadly there is a rift within the family. C.M. is a private man who never wished to be in the limelight.’
As for Melissa, she ‘is not the most stable of women’, he suggests. ‘I’ve been in the surrogacy business for 30 years and 99.9 per cent of cases have no issues.
‘There were medical reasons C. M. and the doctors recommended the abortion. They are not her children, they never were her children. So she had no right to see them in hospital.
‘To be honest, by that stage she was in litigation with my client, so why would he want anything to do with her? She was trying to block him becoming a father.
‘He is devoted to those boys. He’s loving being a father. He’s coping very well.’
None of this helps comfort Melissa, who today remains haunted by thoughts of the triplets she carried.
She says it’s her priority to ensure they’re being treated well. ‘If I find out they are not being cared for properly, I will take further legal action,’ she adds.
And what about commercial surrogacy generally? After her shocking experience, she tells me: ‘It’s not only disreputable – it’s evil.’
She adds: ‘When I went into it, I’d read all those stories about celebrities having children via surrogates and they had all apparently had happy endings. I had no doubts.
‘But now, I would urge people in the UK to think very seriously before thinking of getting surrogate babies from abroad. In America it’s a free-for-all.
‘You always hear the “happy” stories, but people are never told horror stories like mine.’
I think about the babies all of the time – they never deserved this