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.