Thanks to assisted reproductive technology and surrogacy, even people who don’t want or deserve children can buy their way to parenthood. Such was the case with one couple who, after nearly nine months of demanding their surrogate Heathyr abort, left a hospital in 2020 with a baby boy in their arms.
Single mother Heathyr went into the surrogacy application and matching process, hoping she would “be on the same page” with the couple about ending the life of the unborn child.
“I personally do not believe in termination unless there is something that will hurt the quality of life of the child,” she explained in a series of viral TikTok videos. “I’m probably saying that wrong, but I don’t think it’s fair to bring a child into the world if they have severe brain damage and they’re probably going to die a few days after birth or something of that instance.”
Her agency ultimately paired her with a self-proclaimed Catholic couple who claimed they did not believe in abortion. During legal negotiations, Heathyr’s agency took note of both parties’ convictions about ending life in the womb and added them to the surrogacy contract.
Heathyr would later learn that even the most detailed surrogacy contracts don’t protect women and the child they are carrying from emotional and physical harm.
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The couple openly desired a set of boy-girl twins, which they tried to get by placing two handpicked embryos, no doubt taking advantage of the normalized reproductive technologies trend of
