When Gloria Ruiz decided to become a gestational surrogate, she thought she was doing families struggling with infertility a favor. Now that she’s carried other people’s children twice, Ruiz doubts sacrificing her well-being for people who want to become parents by renting another woman’s body is as generous and kind as her fertility agency told her.
Ruiz, a stay-at-home military wife and mom of a child with special needs, initially saw renting her womb as beneficial to her family. They could have some extra cash but not lose their matriarch to a time-consuming desk job somewhere in a California high-rise.
Those benefits didn’t feel like a complete lie the first time she was paid to carry someone else’s child, Ruiz says, but that changed. Seven months after she delivered her first surrogate baby in March 2021, Ruiz’s agency onboarded her to be a gestational carrier for another couple.
“I kind of finally just gave in to the pressure,” Ruiz told The Federalist. “I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, but it needs to be just as perfect as the first one.’”
Unfortunately, it was anything but.
Emotionally and Physically Scarred
The married couple Ruiz’s agency matched her with lived about an hour up the road from her home, says Ruiz. They planned to use in vitro fertilization to join a purchased egg and the husband’s sperm or sperm purchased from an anonymous man. Ruiz’s surrogacy contract provided to The Federalist confirms this plan. Because the man was a citizen
