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Latest Surrogacy News
Surrogate mothers
happy in their role
By
Martin Hutchinson
Last Updated: Wednesday,
2 July, 2003,
BBC
News Online health staff in Madrid
Surrogate mothers
have few doubts about handing over their babies - and
suffer few emotional scars afterwards, claims a study.
The popular conception
of surrogacy is that women who go through pregnancy to
provide an infertile woman with a child are frequently
reluctant to part with the baby once it is born, and are
left with severe emotional problems when they do so.
This has been fuelled
by high-profile cases in which the surrogate has refused
to give the child to the couple.
However, researchers
from City University in the UK - one of the few European
countries in which surrogacy is legal - interviewed
dozens of surrogates and found that the reverse was
generally true.
While approximately a
third did experience "mild difficulties" in the weeks
following the birth, a year later there were only two
out of 34 who confessed to feeling emotional twinges
when thinking about the baby.
Stranger solution
Four out of five
surrogates in the study had never even met the infertile
couple previously, yet there were only a handful of
reported "conflicts" during pregnancy.
Only "genuine expenses"
can be paid to surrogates in the UK, and when asked why
they had become surrogates, only one woman said that
money was her prime motivation.
The rest said they
wished to help childless couples, while others said they
either enjoyed being pregnant, or found surrogacy
boosted their feelings of self-worth.
Ms Vasanti Jadva, who
led the study, said there were no reported problems when
it came to handing the baby over to its new parents.
She said: "All of the
women were happy with the decision reached about when to
hand over the baby and none of the women experienced any
doubts or difficulties whilst handing over the baby.
"One woman said that
she never viewed it as handing over the child, instead
she was handing back the child."
Another researcher,
Professor Susan Golombok, said: "One woman reported that
just seeing the look on the face of the 'commissioning
parents' made it all worthwhile."
She said she was not
aware of more than a few cases in the last two decades
in the UK in which the surrogate changed her mind and
tried to keep the baby.
There are approximately
40 surrogate deliveries in England and Wales each year.
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