Surrogate who loved her baby horrified at being ‘used and discarded’

A mother of three who entered surrogacy in desperation to escape her violent boyfriend is now campaigning to abolish the ‘exploitative’ practice.

In an interview with The Daily Mail, the Argentinian known only as Belén explained that it was “impossible” not to love her surrogate son Piero who was taken from her at birth, and despite assurances, she has never been allowed to see him since.

As a 31-year-old, who was living with her physically abusive boyfriend, Belén agreed to be a surrogate for a homosexual couple in exchange for money to move out and provide for her children. But after they failed to fulfill their agreement, she realised that she had just been their “incubator” with no concern for her wellbeing.

‘Abandoned’

Speaking about the effect of surrogacy on Piero, she wondered: “How are you going to tell him that you left the woman who carried him abandoned with her three other children? That you used her and discarded her? How are you going to explain that to him?”

“I know I’m criticised a lot for having loved him. And I think, ‘How could you not want me to love your child? How could you not want me to show him that he is loved?”

She emphasised that if “you pursue parenthood consciously through the exploitation of another woman, everyone knows there is a need involved. And however much you try to romanticise it, the reality is that we need to be conscious enough to understand that sometimes our needs can’t be fulfilled.

“We don’t go around violating other people’s bodies because we want something.”

UK debate

In the UK, MPs recently spoke against a petition calling for the ‘intended parents’ in surrogacy arrangements to be “recognised as their child’s legal parents from birth”.

Conservative MP Rebecca Smith noted that in countries such as France, Germany and Italy, surrogacy is restricted or even prohibited, reflecting the “serious ethical questions that arise when a child is intentionally separated from the woman who carried them in the womb”.

“By its very nature, surrogacy involves a woman’s body becoming a means to an end. She is carrying a child for the benefit of another family. My concern is that our efforts to help people to become parents risk constructing a system in which women’s reproductive capacity becomes merely a resource for others to use.”

Although surrogacy is permitted in the UK, payments are supposed to be limited to “reasonable expenses” – including if a child is born abroad. Wherever the child is born, the surrogate mother will be automatically recognised as the child’s mother under UK law, and that status can only be changed through a court order.