The nightmare of surrogacy
Reproduced from ARMS (VIC) Association Representing Mothers Separated by Adoption
‘Odette Lees’ (pseudonym) bravely spoke about her surrogacy experience at the 2019 International Surrogacy Conference held in Melbourne – Broken Bonds Big Money. She updated her story at the end of last year, some of which was included in the closing address following the 1984 Legislation Anniversary Panel at our AGM. Here is her account in full:
Will I ever see my son again?: The nightmare continued.
In 2015, my cousin Melanie approached me asking if I would have a baby for her. Chemotherapy had rendered her infertile. But she had always struggled with being able to fall pregnant and carry a pregnancy. She desperately wanted a child and I wanted to help her become a mother, after being told I would play a special role in the child’s life being her or his Aunty.
I always adored my cousin and loved her very much. I thought I could do this, and then, my own boy Christopher would have a playmate as we don’t live too far apart. I saw this as extending our family and growing closer together.
Alas, right from the beginning, my arrangement with Melanie and her husband turned into a nightmare. She could not cope with me being pregnant, constantly told me I would be having a miscarriage, never attended any medical appointments and stopped paying the medical bills that were associated with the pregnancy. She also had engaged a lawyer which created legal bills for me, which under the Surrogacy Act Queensland were supposed to be at the cost of the intending parents (Melanie and her husband). I felt completely unsupported by her in every way during this time.
When my son was born, I felt terrible seeing him go into the arms of a woman who had behaved so abysmally towards me. My cousin had made allegations of child abuse against me whilst I was in recovery for the caesarean birth of Mitchell. I received a subpoena to appear in the Family Court, so that they could take legal custody of Mitchell and they were forced to pay the outstanding legal and medical bills to date. I was forced to appear in court from my hospital bed. I have documented all of this in my article ‘Bitter Family Ties Will I ever see my son again’? in Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out (2019, Lahl et al., Spinifex Press).
The Family Court Judge ruled that it was up to Melanie and her husband whether I could meet my son or at least have some photos of him. They decided, I could have no contact with Mitchell at all. To this day – nearly nine years later – I have only seen my son accidentally in 2021 during a street fair. Mitchell was with his father and he ran away with my son as fast as he could. There were a lot of people and it was a big shock for me. The public photos that my cousin posts on the internet are the only pictures of Mitchell I have seen. I never got a photo from Melanie.
But that was not all. In 2019, three years following the birth of my son, Melanie filed an application for me to have to pay child support for Mitchell. I immediately called my pro bono surrogacy lawyer who had rescued me earlier and handed proceedings over to her. It turned out that my cousin had only provided some of the pages from the court orders in her application. The court orders clearly stated that “the intending parents would be foolish to file for child support from the birth mother.” Unfortunately for them they did. Thankfully, child support services saw the ridiculousness of Melanie’s application and rejected it. It later came out during evidence in a domestic violence hearing in 2021 that my cousin had done this to coerce me into relinquishing my birth rights and remove me from Mitchell’s birth certificate as the birth mother. In other words, it was an attempt to blackmail me.
During the launch of the book Broken Bonds, some online taunts were made public about the seminar and speeches. It was later discovered that Melanie had hired an investigator to follow me for the period that I was visiting Melbourne and talked about my essay in the book at an international surrogacy conference.
In 2020, I became pregnant with my third son. This became a high-risk pregnancy with a rare condition called ‘Placenta Accreta’ which saw me being airlifted to Townsville at 32 weeks’ gestation where I was placed on bedrest for the remainder of the pregnancy. I gave birth via caesarean on 28 September 2020 at 35 weeks 6 days. My son weighed 5 pounds 6 ounces.
During this pregnancy, in June 2020, I received a phone call from the police to inform me that they had a subpoena to serve me for an allegation about domestic violence from my cousin filing a civil complaint. A civil complaint can be filed by anyone who you may have a relationship with. This is a personal complaint that does not involve the police and can be filed at any courthouse. This happened four years post birth without any contact to my son. While I was in Townsville Hospital on bed rest Melanie was filing a subpoena to access my personal medical records as she was trying to say that my hospital stay was not due to a high risk pregnancy. This caused great stress to myself and my unborn son. I once again had to appear in court from a hospital bed.
Following this new legal case brought on by Melanie, I contacted my surrogacy lawyer once more. There was a trial hearing in February 2021, where I had to nurse a 3-month-old newborn whilst on the stand. During this hearing it was revealed that over the last four years, my cousin had gone to great lengths to stalk me which included several fake online social media accounts and investigators following me. I had blocked my cousin on social media during my pregnancy in 2015, which she admitted she had known on the stand.
During the trial it became clear that my cousin was quite sick. The judge stated in her verdict that Melanie had a clear ‘mental infirmity’. This observation went in my favour. My cousin had spent many hours watching me and my little family. Since she had made homicidal threats against me, this had been very worrying. The judge saw the unjust and vexatious harassment that I had endured since I had fallen pregnant and ruled against Melanie. I had to pay for a barrister, but I had the pro bono support of my surrogacy legal team once more. This was a precedent, a first in Australian legal history. The verdict handed down by the judge gave power and voice to a mistreatment I have suffered over long years.
Meanwhile, I have separated from my youngest son’s father due to domestic violence. After another three years of counselling, I have great support networks around me.
My cousin has since gone through a divorce from her husband, and I hear that it has been, and still is, very toxic. Which is not surprising given her erratic and narcissistic behaviour. I think about my son often and so does my eldest boy Christopher. We always hope that Mitchell is ok; however we worry about the care that he is receiving.
I have been fortunate enough to have a beautiful empowering lawyer who saw all of this for what it was, and fought hard for my human rights as a woman and a mother. She has always stood by me and this experience has cost her firm hundreds of thousands in pro bono work. It has also seen me personally out of pocket for approximately $50,000 for medical bills going back to the surrogacy pregnancy and birth, and for ongoing litigation. It’s important to remember that at that time I was unemployed and was raising a young child by myself. The only reason that I have had ongoing legal expenses is from my cousin constantly attacking me and harassing me. If she and her husband had just followed the Queensland Surrogacy Act, paid for the legal, medical and other pregnancy associated costs, all of this could have been avoided.
Surrogacy is a terrible violation of women and children, it is literally buying and selling children. I am not the only woman in Australia with a horrible experience. This way of making children is creating another stolen generation, children are growing up not knowing who they are or where they come from. I am fortunate that Mitchell has me listed as his birth mother on his birth certificate and one day, despite the lies that he will be told, he will come searching for us and want to get to know us. Surrogacy needs to be banned worldwide, there is no positive outcome for children or women in this human rights violation.
For more information about ARMS (VIC) Association Representing Mothers Separated by Adoption please see their website: armsvic.org.au