EXCLUSIVE: “I’m A Child Born From Surrogacy, And I’ve Seen How Much It’s Screwed My Life”

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson, Paris Hilton and Carter Reum – all four of these A-list celebrity couples (and many, many more) conceived children using surrogacy for one reason or another. Some hopeful mothers or fathers struggle with their own fertility, while other couples literally can’t conceive naturally because they’re the same sex. 

The latter situation draws criticism in and of itself, since, let’s be honest, the way some gay couples talk about picking egg suppliers “like they were buying a dog” is infuriating. However, the ethics surrounding the practice of surrogacy are constantly under question.

At the start of 2024, Pope Francis called for a universal ban on surrogacy, saying that an unborn child mustn't be “turned into an object of trafficking” and even going as far as deeming the practice “deplorable.” This stance understandably sparked outrage from surrogacy supporters, but for those who similarly feel that the practice commodifies bodies and commercializes reproductive value á la human trafficking, this policy address was welcomed with arms wide open.

Very often, surrogacy discourse seems to start and end with the rights of the parents. While people clash in disagreement over morality – whether women should be allowed to rent their wombs, same-sex couples should be able to buy babies, or people in general should interfere with fertility (or lack thereof) – we have to wonder…how do the children born from surrogacy feel about it all? 

One woman, Olivia Maurel, was born from surrogacy and has now become a vocal advocate against the practice, asserting that it “screwed” her life. In an exclusive interview with Evie Magazine, Maurel shares her intimate thoughts about finally discovering the truth behind her birth at age 30 and the troubling existential questions that followed.

Human Beings Are Being “Created, Sold, Bought”

The circumstances which Maurel believes led her parents to opt for surrogacy instead of natural conception may sound eerily familiar to many modern couples. Both were very successful, hard working people in the clothing business, she said, who didn’t have time to think about having kids.

“They were working long, hard hours, and having a child would have been impossible,” Maurel explained. “At one point, I believe my father wanted a child, but my intended mother was already in her late forties and had had fertility issues.”

So, Maurel’s parents – aged 48 (intended mother) and 39 (father) – conceived a child through surrogacy in Kentucky, United States, using the surrogate mother’s egg. Upon birth, Maurel’s original birth certificate was sealed using a practice known as sealed birth certificates: The original is kept hidden from the child, and a new one with the intended parents' names is reissued to allegedly protect children from feeling any shame surrounding illegitimacy.

Whether or not these policies have good intentions for the children, Maurel had no idea she was surrogate-born until, at age 30, her mother-in-law bought her a DNA test. She said her MIL had watched as she struggled with mental health – struggles Maurel now attributes to the trauma of abandonment – and felt she had to buy her the test to get some answers.

“I didn’t have many friends as I would have hyper-attachment issues. I was always scared to be abandoned, so I would suffocate people, scared that they would leave me,” Maurel says. 

She adds that she also had difficulty navigating relationships with older women: “I always seemed to be in search of the mother figure that would help me fill that void I was left with at birth. So every older woman that would enter my life, I would treat like she would be my mother, but she wasn’t. So in the end, none of these relationships would last as they weren’t healthy and were doomed to begin with.”

Discovering the Truth Through DNA

Though Maurel didn’t have physical proof until very recently that she was surrogate-born, she said that certain aspects of her upbringing – like her mother’s advanced age – gave her a gut feeling which Maurel says never left her.

“In our household, something was always off,” she begins. “I physically had nothing to do with my intended mother as well. I’m very tall, she’s extremely short. She has brown eyes, I have blue eyes. She has darker skin, I have very fair skin, etc.”

Around age 17, Maurel says that the gut feeling surrounding her conception had become so unbearable that she took to the internet to do some digging on her own. She researched the town on her birth certificate (Louisville, Kentucky) and fertility centers local to the area. 

“Just like that, on the very top Google answer search was a surrogacy agency, and everything clicked into place,” Maurel says. “The puzzle was finished in my brain.”

From there, Maurel says she started developing bipolar disorder. This later manifested in depression, alcohol and drug consumption, and even suicide attempts.

“My brain divided into two: the Olivia that knew and the Olivia that had to pretend in front of her parents that she didn’t know anything,” Maurel tells me.

She didn’t want to confront her parents because she feared their reaction, but did instead confide in doctors, friends, boyfriends, and later on, her husband and in-laws. Now equipped with DNA proof and supported by the family she has made for herself, Maurel has gone public with her testimony. 

She recently spoke in front of the Czech parliament and appeared on Allie Beth Stuckey’s Relatable podcast, urging lawmakers around the world that regulating surrogacy isn’t enough – Maurel believes society should abolish it for the good of children.

“I have wondered all my life who I was, what was that other part of me, that 50% of unknown history,” Maurel says. “You cannot build yourself without knowing where you come from. So I didn’t build myself as a stable human being.”

The “Rent-a-Womb” Model Offers a Pretty Lucrative Paper Trail

Surrogacy arrangements vary from compensated to compassionate. You’ll commonly hear the terms compassionate or altruistic surrogacy as they apply to surrogacy cases between close friends or relatives who are solely motivated by wanting to help out a loved one. This arrangement is considered uncompensated, but surely, many trusted friends or family members have received monetary and non-monetary benefits as a result of carrying their loved one’s baby. Some see it as a way to build stronger friendships and prefer this route rather than waiting for a surrogate match from an agency.

With compensated surrogacy, the surrogate is financially supported for the use of her body beyond associated medical costs. This might include legal fees, lost wages, travel fees, maternity clothes, and vitamins.

Last year, Forbes shared the news that “it’s not just celebrities” who turn to surrogacy. No, the commercial surrogacy industry is poised to grow tenfold by 2032. Surrogacy is a multibillion-dollar industry, says Maurel, who asserts that the people selling babies and using women to rent wombs want to make money “and a lot of it.”

With compensated surrogacy, the costs to employ a womb can range from $60,000 to $150,000 in the United States. This leads many hopeful parents to seek out surrogates in other nations, like Mexico or Latin America, where costs typically don’t exceed $70,000, or in Eastern European countries like Ukraine, a leading supplier of surrogate wombs, where costs often max out at $50,000.

“They [Ukrainian surrogacy providers] stuff pregnant surrogates in small apartments until they deliver in horrible conditions, and then they are thrown out without any care once they have delivered,” Maurel explains. “That means that if they have problems due to the pregnancy and/or birth after the delivery of the baby, the agencies do not care. These women are usually poor and do not have the money to pay for health insurance.”

In Ukraine, currently a war-torn nation, companies like Swiss-based BioTexCom thrive under the radar. They tout themselves as providing “the joy of parenthood” to couples around the world and even offer dystopian Black Friday discounts, but multiple surrogates who found work renting their wombs have gone public about alleged mistreatment. 

One surrogate shared a bed with other surrogates for 32 weeks of her pregnancy. Another was placed on a 4 p.m. curfew and faced fines totaling half her monthly compensation if it was missed.

Demand only continues to grow, however, and as understood by Maurel’s personal testimony, the surrogacy industry causes harm to many individuals. It’s not uncommon in Ukraine for children of surrogacy to be “lined up side by side” in hotels protected under a militarized security system with barbed wire to boot.

The “My Body, My Choice” Mentality Ignores Other Beings Involved

“I do think in surrogacy we only care about the intended parents and their desire to have children,” Maurel says. “We do not think about the negative impacts on these children because we simply do not care. The desire to have a family is fulfilled, and we think that money and love can solve all problems.”

Fun fact, Maurel says, money and love don’t. As a child born from surrogacy, Maurel explains that she has had to deal with the trauma of abandonment. 

This type of trauma may mistakenly be used to describe only situations where a child is physically abandoned by one or both of his or her parents, but it also applies to experiences where a child was emotionally abandoned or repeatedly made to feel insecure, unsafe, or alone. Perhaps a child was abused, neglected, or forced to witness divorce, death, illness, or substance abuse. They then may develop trauma-related abandonment issues such as depression, post-traumatic stress, or attachment disorders.

“I was ripped away from my biological mother at birth, the only woman I knew, felt, smelt…the one I craved for,” Maurel says, explaining how people who aren’t born from surrogacy may misunderstand or disregard the potential emotional impacts – and just how severely they may manifest. “I had to take the great leap into the cold, austere world, to be thrown into the arms of people I didn’t know. This is a traumatizing event for a newborn that already has to cope with the void of not having his mother, her milk, her smell.” 

After having gone public with the truth behind her birth and her feelings about the surrogacy industry, Maurel says that public response has been “incredible.” On X (formerly known as Twitter), she says people have been more positive than on TikTok, where her anti-surrogacy content receives mixed reactions.

People in favor of surrogacy may say that everyone is allowed to have a family, but Maurel takes a more nuanced approach and believes this is not true.

“A child is not a right, but children have rights, and we must protect them,” she states. Maurel also often hears opposing voices say that surrogates “choose” to become one, in a “my body, my choice” sort of mentality, but doesn’t feel that this is entirely true either.

“When money is involved, the contentment is altered,” she says, giving the caveat that there are of course a small number of women who will do it for free. “But in general, if you take the money out of it, no one is going to line up to go through 9 months of pregnancy – a high risk pregnancy since surrogacy pregnancies are high risk pregnancies.”

Is Surrogacy Our Best Solution for the Global Fertility Crisis?

Other advocates of surrogacy feel that this practice could be a good way for us to fix failing birth rates. Indeed, in most countries around the world, we’re seeing birth rates on the decline at the same time that fertility-related diseases and disorders appear to be rising. Couple these physiological issues with the fact that having children in today’s inflated, war-impacted economy is difficult enough, and it may seem like surrogacy could be the most compassionate way to help parents struggling to conceive.

But Maurel disagrees, asserting that surrogacy isn’t a treatment for infertility: “After having a baby via surrogacy, the couple is left infertile. There is IVF and adoption, which are two beautiful solutions to help couples in desire of a family.”

Maurel and her husband made the choice to have children earlier on and agreed to put her professional career temporarily aside in order to do so. She had received an endometriosis diagnosis – a disorder that affects 10% of reproductive aged women and can contribute to infertility – so she said she “had the choice to have children now or never.” 

This choice, Maurel says, was easily made, and at 26 years old, she became a first-time mother.

“It’s tough, I’m not going to lie,” Maurel confesses, explaining how she and her husband had their first child with only his salary to support the three of them. “But I would not exchange my life for another one, and I would never have rented a woman to birth a child for me. … I wouldn’t ever want to be in a position where I ask another woman to do something for me that might risk her life.”

From her perspective, Maurel says that surrogacy should simply be banned. She became the spokesperson of the Casablanca Declaration of 2023, a movement to universally abolish the practice. Quoting Nelson Mandela, Maurel affirms that things like this always seem “impossible until it’s done.” 

Indeed, many countries have outright banned surrogacy, and with the recent news of Pope Francis calling for further bans, the legality of such a practice is facing a tough fight. Maurel pointed out how, in Italy, lawmakers are planning on making it penally reprehensible to use a surrogate in another country and then bring the child back to Italy.

“Remember, not too long ago, abolishing slavery seemed impossible. Improbable. No one believed in it,” she says. “Yet, today, slavery has been abolished after years of fighting against it.”

At the time of this article’s publication, all forms of surrogacy are banned not only in Italy but also in Bulgaria, Germany, Portugal, Taiwan, Spain, and Maurel’s home country of France. Australia, Britain, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand have all banned for-profit surrogacy but still allow for some altruistic arrangements. In the United States, however, there is no federal legislation regulating the industry; some states are still friendly to commercial surrogacy, from California to New York and many more.

“Today, when we think about slavery, we think of horror. This is exactly what I think will be happening with surrogacy,” says Maurel. “It’s going to take time, effort, and hard work to change peoples’ minds on the subject. However, I have faith.”

Closing Thoughts

The objective fact of the matter is that surrogacy is an unnatural exchange only made possible by the advent of modern medicine. While allopathic interventions like this provide revolutionary, life-changing options for people who struggle with infertility, they also open up a Pandora’s Box of ways that people can get around nature’s design. 

Some selfishly choose surrogacy so they don’t “mess up” their body, while others literally can’t carry offspring because they’re in a same-sex relationship, but in all cases, surrogacy interrupts the natural connection between a woman and the baby she gives birth to. While it may be a loving gift in certain cases, it’s also a practice that may be weaponized by others to prey on exploitable individuals for profits. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Maurel’s advocacy and the shocking details about the surrogacy industry, she shared with me that she intends to write a book this calendar year, so keep an eye on her social media to stay in-the-know. 

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