{"id":1782,"date":"2013-03-06T10:19:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T15:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/?p=1782"},"modified":"2013-03-06T10:19:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T15:19:31","slug":"how-the-story-of-a-surrogate-expectant-parents-and-a-baby-reveals-the-pitfalls-of-repro-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/03\/how-the-story-of-a-surrogate-expectant-parents-and-a-baby-reveals-the-pitfalls-of-repro-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Story of a Surrogate, Expectant Parents, and a Baby Reveals the Pitfalls of Repro Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Fundamentally, it is simply a sad story, one that took place just a few miles from where I live, in the hospital where I gave birth to two of my own babies.<\/p>\n

As CNN reports<\/a>, Connecticut resident Crystal Kelley agreed to carry a baby for a couple who had three children and wanted a fourth. The couple\u2019s three children had been conceived via IVF and there were pregnancy complications. The mother was unable to carry another child herself, but the couple had two embryos left in storage that they wanted to use with a surrogate.<\/p>\n

Kelley is a single mother of two children for whom surrogacy fees would make a big difference in her ability to care for her family. So contracts were signed, the two embryos were transferred into Kelley\u2019s uterus, and she became pregnant with one baby. Everyone was thrilled. And then things got complicated.<\/p>\n

With the parents standing behind her, the ultrasound technician at the hospital put the wand on Kelley\u2019s stomach. The test confirmed her worst fears: It showed the baby did have a cleft lip and palate, a cyst in the brain, and a complex heart abnormality.<\/p>\n

The doctors explained the baby would need several heart surgeries after she was born. She would likely survive the pregnancy, but had only about a 25% chance of having a \u201cnormal life,\u201d Kelley remembers the doctors saying.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Kelley\u2019s midwife, Dr. Elisa Gianferrari, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Hartford Hospital, and Leslie Ciarleglio, a genetic counselor, described what happened next.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the ultrasound findings, (the parents) feel that the interventions required to manage (the baby\u2019s medical problems) are overwhelming for an infant, and that it is a more humane option to consider pregnancy termination,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Kelley disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Kelley feels that all efforts should be made to \u2018give the baby a chance\u2019 and seems adamantly opposed to termination,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

The letter describes how the parents tried to convince Kelley to change her mind. Their three children were born prematurely, and two of them had to spend months in the hospital and still had medical problems. They wanted something better for this child.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe (parents) feel strongly that they pursued surrogacy in order to minimize the risk of pain and suffering for their baby,\u201d Gianferrari and Ciarleglio wrote. They \u201cexplained their feelings in detail to Ms. Kelley in hopes of coming to an agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two sides were at a standoff. The doctor and the genetic counselor offered an amniocentesis in the hope that by analyzing the baby\u2019s genes, they could learn more about her condition. Kelley was amenable, they noted, but the parents \u201cfeel that the information gained from this testing would not influence their decision to consider pregnancy termination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The atmosphere in the room became very tense, Kelley remembers. The parents were brought into the geneticist\u2019s office to give everyone some privacy.<\/p>\n

After a while, Kelley was reunited with the parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were both visibly upset. The mother was crying,\u201d she remembers. \u201cThey said they didn\u2019t want to bring a baby into the world only for that child to suffer. \u2026 They said I should try to be God-like and have mercy on the child and let her go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI told them that they had chosen me to carry and protect this child, and that was exactly what I was going to do,\u201d Kelley said. \u201cI told them it wasn\u2019t their decision to play God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then she walked out of the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t look at them anymore,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The couple went on to offer Kelley $10,000 to terminate the pregnancy. Both the parents and Kelley retained lawyers. Kelley ultimately moved to Michigan, which does not recognize surrogacy contracts and would therefore view Kelley as the baby\u2019s legal mother. Kelley found a family who had other children with special needs who was willing to adopt the baby. On June 25, 2012, Kelley gave birth to a baby girl. The baby has significant health issues, including a heart defect, a cleft palate and lip, and heterotaxy, a condition in which her internal organs are not in the proper places. In the months since her birth, she has had multiple surgeries and faces many more treatments. Her adoptive mother says, \u201cUltimately, we hold onto a faith that in providing [her] with love, opportunity, encouragement, she will be the one to show us what is possible for her life and what she is capable of achieving.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I said, a sad story. And an important one. Stories, I believe, are the<\/em> most important foundation of conversations around the possibilities, limits, and pitfalls of today\u2019s reproductive and genetic technologies. I also believe it is important to receive such stories as the complex, nuanced things that they are, rather than transforming them into morality tales that become a tool for arguing what is right and wrong, who was saintly and who was selfish. So rather than coming to clear conclusions about this story and who was most at fault, I will simply outline the many pitfalls of reproductive technology that this story highlights and a few opinions along the way:<\/p>\n

First, this story shows that money is a significant motivator<\/strong>, if not the only one, for surrogates who offer their wombs to prospective parents. As the reporter tells it, Kelley sought a surrogacy arrangement primarily because of financial need, not altruism. While I\u2019ve read many surrogacy stories in which a desire to help is a primary motivator, with the large sums of money involved, surrogacy is clearly a business arrangement in many (most?) cases.<\/p>\n

Second, it highlights the unique relationship that a woman and a growing fetus have.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>I believe that the fact that we are conceived and borne in intimate relationship with another human being is a sign of God\u2019s primary creative motivation, to be in loving relationship with God\u2019s creatures, who must be in loving relationship with others if we are to thrive. For this reason, I am more leery of surrogacy than of almost any other reproductive technology, because it disturbs this primary relationship in and through which we are created. This is also why I am even more leery of the prospect of artificial wombs, which at least one evangelical bioethicist<\/a> has called a \u201cmorally acceptable\u201d option for giving frozen embryos a chance at life. To disturb the primary, fundamental relationship in which all of us are initially made and nurtured is to transform a child from a creature formed in relationship to a product manufactured in isolation.<\/p>\n

Third, this story reveals the common temptation to use technology to overcome all human limitations, to solve every perceived problem<\/strong><\/a>, whether that limitation is wanting another child when one\u2019s body is unable to carry one (\u201csolved\u201d with the use of IVF and surrogacy), or being faced with the daunting prospect of raising a sick child (\u201csolved\u201d through pregnancy termination). I do not believe that the prospective parents in this case were evil. I believe they truly saw what they desired\u2014a healthy fourth child\u2014as a good thing for their family and their child. The point at which I would press them to question their motivations and decisions most deeply wouldn\u2019t necessarily be in the desire to terminate (though that is indeed a fraught decision requiring deep discernment), but rather the desire to have another child in the first place, rather than accepting in gratitude the family they had, as well as the inability of their bodies to create another life. (One facet of this story that goes unexamined in the news coverage is whether the couple was motivated at all to pursue a fourth child in part because they did not want to leave those two embryos behind in a freezer\u2014a motivation that raises even more questions about how reproductive medicine is performed and its many ethical and emotional pitfalls.)<\/p>\n

Fourth, both parties in this story invoked a merciful God<\/strong> in their favored decision. To the parents, sparing a child great suffering seemed like the merciful thing to do. For Kelley, God\u2019s mercy was evident in giving the child a chance to live. I am sympathetic to both views. I do, however, believe that the impulse to accept, welcome, and care for those who suffer more closely mirrors how Christ operated in the world than the impulse to \u201cspare\u201d those who suffer from life itself.<\/p>\n

Finally, this story ends in hope, in a new story still to be lived and told by the adoptive parents and their child<\/strong> in whom they \u201csee a little girl who\u2019s defied the odds, who constantly surprises her doctors with what she\u2019s able to do \u2014make eye contact, giggle at her siblings, grab toys, eye strangers warily,\u201d and who has \u201can infectious smile.\u201d<\/p>\n

If ever there was a story that sharply outlines the many, complex, difficult, emotional, ethical conversations that we need to have around the promises and pitfalls of reproductive technology, this is it.<\/p>\n

What do you see in this story?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fundamentally, it is simply a sad story, one that took place just a few miles from where I live, in the hospital where I gave birth to two of my own babies. As CNN reports, Connecticut resident Crystal Kelley agreed to carry a baby for a couple who had three children and wanted a fourth. 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