Letter to Senator Pilcher-Cook

Dear Senator Pilcher-Cook ,

I am writing to you today to thank you for the bill that you are introducing which would ban surrogacy in Kansas. I am a product of a traditional surrogacy, and support all bans on surrogacy.

Surrogacy is not in the best interest for children. My reasons for believing this are as follows.

• Surrogacy is a great way to circumnavigate the home studies which are done for children of adoption. Meaning that there is no guarantee that the children being born are being ensured a safe home.
  • I myself lived in an abusive household, and was ultimately removed from the intended parents care just after turning 17. My reality, is that I don't have a relationship with my birth father, or adoptive mother, and they don't have a child. Surrogacy isn't a magic answer for creating families.
  • Peter Troung and Mark Newton a California couple who hired a Russian surrogate for $8,000.00 to start their family. Days after he was born they started sexually abusing, created distributed child pornography, traveled the world prostituting their son to a pedophile network. What Newton had to say when he and his partner were sentenced to 40 years in prison "being a father was an honor and a privilege that amounted to the best six years of my life". (This couple desperately wanted their child.)
• The majority of all surrogacy is done with either donor egg or sperm. This means when we create children via this technology we are intentionally creating them to separate them from one or both biological parents. There has been much evidence within the world of psychology that shows the detrimental effects of separating a child from their biological parents.
  • A letter to mental health journal  by E Wellisch "...knowledge of and definite relationship to his genealogy is necessary for a child to build up his complete body image and world picture. It's an inalienable and entitled right of every person. There's an urge a call in everybody to follow and fulfill the tradition of the family, race, religion and community into which he was born" reason behind the letter was deprivation of this could develop into a stunting of emotional development. 
  • There is a primal wound, for both the child and the mother when the child is separated from their birth mother. Nancy Verrier wrote a book titled Primal Wound. (Here is a link to a blog by an adoptee who read the book, and her thoughts about it, and how the primal wound resonates with her http://adoptionvoicesmagazine.com/adoptee-view/adoptee-view-what-can-a-tiny-baby-know/#.UuW2N7ROnDc )
• The children being born via surrogacy are not entitled to know the truth about their conception.
  • Many egg donor agencies don't keep donor information on file, so if the egg donor were to develop cancer years after donating her eggs she would not be able to let her offspring know that they need to be aware and have early screening done. Picture every time that you've been to the doctor's office and have had to fill out family medical history. Then, imagine that you get salt rubbed in the would every time because you don't have a right to this information. That the people who are protected in donor conception are only the adults involved and not the people created this way.
  • This is an excerpt about twin siblings from a traditional adoption who not knowing they were sibling married. The entire article can be found at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/twin-brother-sister-marry-article-1.343118 Chris Atkins of the organization Adults Affected by Adoption said that although such cases are unusual, the attraction between the twins is not surprising. "There is a phenomenon called genetic sexual attraction," Atkins said, noting that people tend to be attracted to people with similar likes and dislikes, sense of humor and even looks. "That happens with people who are not related," she said. "If siblings meet who are not aware they are biologically related, to all intents and purposes they're going to think, 'This is my ideal match.' " The extraordinary case also could reignite a long-simmering debate in Britain over the right of adopted children to know the identity of their biological parents, the Evening Standard reported. "There will be more causes like this if children are not given access to the truth," said Prof. Lord David Alton, who uncovered the twins' case last month. (We as a society need to consider issues like these. Within surrogacy it is completely possible that you're using donor sperm. Within the U.S. There are no restrictions on sperm donors and the number of times that they can donate. What we're starting to see now are donor children who have siblings in the amount of triple digits. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Sperm donor with 150 children) (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130814/The-man-fathered-1-000-children-Theyre-middle-class-living-Britain--idea-extraordinary-story-surrounding-birth.html fathered 1,000 children most who don't know their background) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/23/kirk-maxey-father-of-400_n_401715.html Sperm donor who fathered 400 children, demanding regulation on sperm banks)
    
  • As someone who is active within the donor conceived community, a common thread that I see between my peers is that they're all curious about where they came from. I see so many people asking which donor registry communities they should go to in order to have the best odds of finding either their siblings or their biological parent.
    
• This industry turns children into commodities. No one is entitled to have a child, children are blessings.
  
  • Quote from the "Son of a Surrogate" Blog
    
    It looks to me like I was bought and sold. You can dress it up with as many pretty words as you want. You can wrap it up in a silk freaking scarf. You can pretend these are not your children. You can say it is a gift or you donated your egg to the IM. But the fact is that someone has contracted you to make a child, give up your parental rights and hand over your flesh and blood child. I dont care if you think I am not your child, what about what I think! Maybe I know I am your child.When you exchange something for money it is called a commodity. http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/
    
  • The basis of creating a creating children in surrogacy are contracts, lawyers and money. That's not in the best interest of children.
    
  • Due to the fact that the process to buy the child is costly, too many embryos often get transferred. This increases the instances of pregnancy with multiples. At the end of the day this means that we're seeing an increase in fetal reductions, because obviously it's high risk to the mothers to carry multiples.
    
  • Designer babies? want just boys? you do this by "creating a bunch of embryos and search for and destroy the female embryos" (Below are excerpts from an interview which is shared by The Center for Bioethics and Culture
    
    • LAHL: Who were your typical egg donors in the early days?
      KAY: Most of our donors were married moms, who had already had their children and wanted to make some extra money. Most of the donors had good intentions in wanting to help someone have a baby, but in all the years I did this work, I never met anyone who wanted to do it for free.
      
    • LAHL: What changes did you see happening with the patients (recipients) over the years?
      KAY: I saw a shift in the fertility patients who had become more demanding, wanting ‘designer babies’. I recall calling one woman who was using a surrogate and an egg donor to have a child. She was very picky about the women she wanted to use. One day, I was working on a Saturday, and I thought I’d found the perfect donor for her, so I called her. She said she was busy and asked if she could call me back in about 30 minutes. I explained that I wasn’t going to be available then so she said she’d get off the treadmill now so we could talk. I thought it was strange that she was so picky, but didn’t want to stop her exercise to discuss the egg donor I found for her. This was a child she so desperately wanted, but her exercise was her priority?
      

Surrogacy is also not in the best interest of women. The reason that we are not allowed to donate our organs (liver, kidney etc..) is that we understand that a huge sum of money negates the ability to make an informed decision. The money is motivating to ignore our mental and physical health, when it is a sum large enough to help improve our quality of life. But, surrogacy and egg donation are physically dangerous to the woman. We have no long term studies to show the effects of the massive amounts of hormones and such that a surrogate or egg donor need to take in order to ready themselves for a gestational surrogacy which allows clinics to tell these women that there is minimal risk. It is not because there aren't women who haven't lost their lives, reproductive ability that we can say that. It's because as an industry that's concerned with the bottom line of profit it doesn't behoove them to follow up.
Again, I thank you sincerely for proposing a ban on surrogacy. As a product of surrogacy I fully believe that this is in the best interest of children, women and families.

Primal Wound - Written by Nancy Verrier

I believe in one of my earlier posts I referenced "Primal Wound" by Nancy Verrier as a great read for someone who has had difficulty with being a product of 3rd party donor conception. I was reading the section she has for adoptees (Information for Adoptees) which can be found here: http://nancyverrier.com/information-for-adoptees/ Reading the primal wound gave me the sense that there was someone out there who understood the pain, and disconnected feeling that I've been through, relatively unacknowledged until recently. I wanted to share what she had to say on her page here:

"

Information for Adoptees

Because you have lived with separation trauma your entire lives, many of you haven’t realized that what you have been feeling and experiencing is not what everyone experiences. For many of you, reading The Primal Wound was your first clue that your particular feelings and behaviors may have been caused by your experience of relinquishment and adoption. Relinquishment means separation and loss, and adoption means living without genetic markers or being reflected back. Both are traumas, one acute and one chronic, and both are going to affect your way of being in the world. Although these feelings, attitudes, and behaviors are normal for having had the experience of separation and adoption, yet they may not be serving you well in your lives today.
On the other hand, there are some of you who resist acknowledging the effects of early trauma, because you haven’t known anything else. For the doubters and naysayers, there is an excellent book by Daniel Siegel you might want to read titled The Developing Mind, which includes the neurobiological reasons that early trauma affects our behavior, emotional responses, and neurological connections. It is difficult to know that one has suffered a trauma, when that trauma happened so early in one’s life.
When someone suffers a trauma at age 30, she can go back to age 25 or 27 as a reference point for her feelings, attitudes and behaviors. She knows that she wasn’t so fearful, so mistrustful, so needing to be in control, so sensitive to rejection, so depressed and anxious. She knew who she was and it isn’t who she appears to be now. Birth mothers, who experience trauma at the time of relinquishment, often get stuck emotionally at the age at which they gave birth.
You as adoptees have no reference point. For most of you, your trauma occurred right after birth, so there is no “before trauma” self. You suffered a loss that you can’t consciously remember and which no one else is acknowledging, but which has a tremendous impact on your sense of Self and others, your emotional responses, your behavior, and your world view. Your brain synapses connected according to your perception of your environment which seemed unsafe, unfamiliar, and in need of constant vigilance. This need for vigilance may have filled you with anxiety. Some of you became compliant and tried to be perfect, while others of you acted out and tested everyone who was important to you.
As children, these behaviors are to be understood and worked with patiently and lovingly (that is if adoptive parents are given a clue that their children have experienced trauma). But as adults, it is up to you to begin to realize the impact your actions have on others and to take responsibility for those actions. This is not always easy, because many of you don’t even realize that you have an impact. (Mom leaves, baby cries, mom doesn’t come back = I have no impact, no effect, no importance.) It is the baby mind that believes you have no impact. For the “adult truth” you have to check with others. Ask your husband/wife/mother/ partner: “Did it hurt you when I did…?” Then you can modify your behavior to reflect their answer. You have to begin to notice and acknowledge the effect you are having on others and then take responsibility for it. Take it from me: You do have an impact! You do matter!
Separation from mother is the ultimate loss. Although hidden from your conscious memory, that loss affects much of how you act in relationships. To be in a mature relationship, you must learn how your beliefs differ from reality. Then you can begin to change harmful behaviors. You may be acting from your trauma and not from your true self at all. Allow others to help you distinguish between the two, and learn to act from your true self, rather than from your traumatized self.
I’ve met thousands of adoptees since the publication of my first book in 1993, and each and every one has had a unique and wonderful personality. Yet there are many similarities in their behavior patterns, some compliant, some defiant, but behavior patterns which emanated from early trauma. As adults, it is time for you to gain control in your life. By you I mean the mature adult you, not the traumatized child you. (How many of you would consciously put a three-year-old in charge of your life? Well, you may have unconsciously done just that!) You have to begin to distinguish between your child and adult selves, and act from your adult self. You owe it to yourselves and those who love you.
Remember: You deserve to be treated with love, respect, and dignity, and you deserve to treat others with love, respect, and dignity."

From my communication with fellow donor conceived we as a community don't tend to speak up about our feelings because we don't want to hurt our social families. However, it's still important to acknowledge what losses we have been through. For anyone out there trying to come to terms with this subject I highly recommend Nancy Verrier's book.

You should be able to find it at most book stores, or you can go to amazon. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0963648004/primalwoundco-20

The Emperor’s New Kids: A First Hand Account of Third Party Reproduction

"What could be the problem in letting eager caretakers use technology to create the children they so desperately want? In this illuminating talk, Alana Newman uses her first person experience as the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor, as well as her years of experience as a fertility industry watch dog to speak on why there is an infertility epidemic, why we should be worried about the use of profiteering from third party reproduction, and why we should reconsider the meaning of “wanted” child." from http://www.loveandfidelity.org/resources/the-emperors-new-kids-a-first-hand-account-of-third-party-reproduction/

Points that struck me
- "because this is a buisness now, anybody who has the money can have a kid because donor conception is really a euphemism for buying and selling kids"
- designer babies.. want just boys? you do this by "creating a bunch of embryos and search for and destroy the female embryos"
- "the only thing they know about their genetic mother and their birth mother, is that she accepted money in order to abandon them"
- " so we use terms like donation, but their lies what the donors are doing is they're accepting money to promise they'll have nothing to do with the child"
- Consider the wanted child. (As a product of donor conception myself, this "wanted" word just rubs salt in the wound.) Below pictures are Peter Troung and Mark Newton a California couple who hired a Russian surrogate for $8,000.00 to start their family. Days after he was born they started sexually abusing, created distributed child pornography, traveled the world prostituting their son to a pedophile network. What Newton had to say when he and his partner were sentenced to 40 years in prison "being a father was an honor and a privilege that amounted to the best six years of my life". (This couple desperately wanted their child.)

- (In a traditional adoption before you can adopt you go through home inspections and thorough screening to ensure that you're able to provide a good home for the child you're adopting. With 3rd party donor conception you get to just buy your baby and bring it home. It's extremely rare that anyone who goes to by sperm, eggs, or hire a surrogate goes through any rigorous screening. Alana Newman has previously interviewed a person who was at one point head of one of the largest egg banks, and she admitted that out of the thousands of prospective parents she saw she had only ever turned one away.)
- The FDA has NOT approved the use of Lupron for fertility use. There are strong associations with cancers for the horomones that the surrogates and egg donors are taking. (Due to the fact that there have been no long term studies on this prospective donors and surrogates aren't informed when making their decision. To learn more about this There is a documentary called "Eggsploitation" that goes into more detail to see some trailers for this documentary or to order to view go to http://www.eggsploitation.com/)
- What differentiates human trafficking from 3rd party donor conception is simply a case of when the paperwork is signed. If all contracts are signed prior to the child being conceived. Then it's ok. If the contracts are signed during the pregnancy that by law is considered baby selling. Highlighted by an attorney who used to be a surrogacy attorney Theresa Erickson. To learn more about this you can go to http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Theresa-Erickson-Surrogacy-Abuse-Selling-Babies-140942313.html 
*** As a product of surrogacy to me it doesn't matter when the paperwork was signed whether I was in the womb yet or not. Consider that in a traditional adoption the mother can sign the agreements while pregnant and have a small bit of time to change her mind after the child is born. ** When you buy the egg or the sperm you're not purchasing it for that! You're purchasing the child. Human beings Should Not be for sale
-  "What happens when children become commodities? We see identity loss, disenfranchised grief"
- The idea of we need to know where we come from (why is ancestry so important to us?)
-  A letter to mental health journal  by E Wellisch "...knowledge of and definite relationship to his genealogy is necessary for a child to build up his complete body image and world picture. It's an inalienable and entitled right of every person. There's an urge a call in everybody to follow and fulfill the tradition of the family, race, religion and community into which he was born" reason behind the letter was deprivation of this could develop into a stunting of emotional development. 
- If it's ok to sell your genetic material why isn't it ok to sell your organs? In organ donation it is believed if there were monetary compensation that people would be influenced to risk their health. Egg donation?? Surrogacy?? There is a risk to health there!!
- Important to know your medical! Many egg donor agencies don't keep long term records if there is something the donor's child should know she has no way of letting them know later down the road.
- 

Alana Newman on Fertility Industry Corruption

Alana Newman recently went to a conference in Charleston, South Carolina, sponsored by the American Association for Adoption and Reproductive Technologies Attorneys (AAARTA). Here is her Youtube video summarizing her thoughts on what she heard.



She has also written an article on her experience at the AAARTA. Please follow the link to read the article.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/01/11645/

Documentary by The Center for Biothethics and Culture on Surrogacy

 The Center for Bioethics and Culture has released a new documentary about surrogacy.



Here are a couple of the reviews for this documentary

Jennifer Lahl’s eye-opening interviews with surrogates, doctors, psychologists, and advocates across the political spectrum explain why surrogacy is either illegal or far more limited in other industrialized countries. Two NOW officials weigh in on the commodification of the financially strapped women who become surrogates and the widely ignored increased risk of maternal death in gestational surrogacy. Surrogates describe medical and emotional nightmares for themselves and the children involved; one who was allowed to visit the child to whom she’d given birth when the little girl was five months old describes finding that the until then constantly collicky infant did nothing but sleep peacefully on the surrogate’s chest the whole time she was there. Until then, she says, “I at no point in time thought about how it would affect her.” Perhaps most sobering, though, are the words of a young woman who was the result of such an arrangement: “Most of the consideration is for the adults” who can afford to effectively buy their children, she says, exploiting both the women hired to bear them and the children whose “foundation of existence is a contract, and money.”
  — Melinda Henneberger, Washington Post

Breeders takes a hard look at the often unacknowledged bioethical complexities, and individual and societal risks, associated with the global rise of commercial surrogacy. Its thoughtful analysis and interviews with a range of surrogates, family building brokers, and health professionals make important connections between those who purchase assisted reproductive technology services, the poor women who exchange their wombs for cash, and the impact third-party reproduction has on children and families.
  — Miriam Zoll, author of Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies

Those who may doubt the truth of the old adage that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” will have their doubts erased by this remarkable film. It powerfully indicts an industry that promises the infertile the joy of a baby but treats women as breeders and children as products. What began with laudable intentions ushered in a form of dehumanization. Jennifer Lahl has done the nation a great service by drawing attention to it.
  — Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

“Breeders” may strike some as a harsh label for the women who go through a pregnancy for another to whom they will give the babies (if) born. But seeing this film exposes the very problematic aspects of this highly commercialized — and seriously unregulated — global activity that need to be understood to have a true picture of this bit of the “baby business” and parenting. It should be required viewing for all of us, not only those taking part in these exchanges.
  — Abby Lippman, PhD, Professor Emerita McGill University; Research Associate, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, and longtime feminist activist with special interests in women’s health and women’s health policies. She has one foot based in academia and the other, the foot she favors, involves her in social justice and reproductive activism with community groups in Montreal and beyond its borders.


If you or anyone you know is considering using surrogacy to start your family this is a must watch. Currently the film is on sale for pre-order. Go to http://breeders.cbc-network.org/  to get it.