A SECOND surrogate mother carrying triplets and being pressured to abort one of her foetuses is sticking to her guns in a desperate bid to save the unborn child.
The biological parents “knew from the beginning that we wouldn’t want to abort unless it was a life-and-death situation,” anguished surrogate Brittneyrose Torres told New York Post.
“We would never want to abort a baby’s life.”
Californian-based Torres, 26, agreed to tell her story after seeing the Post’s report last month about another surrogate mum, Melissa Cook, who was being pressured to abort one of the triplets she was carrying. She, too, refused.
After reading that story, Torres reached out to The Centre for Bioethics and Culture Network, a surrogacy watchdog, in an effort to fight the abortion demand. Torres is 17 weeks pregnant.
She was initially implanted with two fertilised eggs, in hopes that one of them would develop. Both did, and one split in half, making twins — a not-uncommon occurrence during in vitro fertilisation. The twins are male and the third child is female.
“We did not think we would be in this position,” Torres said.
Under her contract with the biological parents, Torres is to receive at least $30,000 ($AU41,000) — $25,000 for carrying one baby and $5,000 extra for carrying two or more.
In both the Torres and Cook cases, the intended parents claimed a provision in their contract gave them the right to order an abortion, and have suspended some payments to the surrogates for breaching it.
Torres says she agreed to become a surrogate after the sister of the intended mum had written on Facebook about how the couple couldn’t have kids.
The intended parents initially seemed excited about having three babies, she said. But around week 12 of the pregnancy, they demanded that she abort the female foetus, claiming increased medical risks for developmental disabilities.
“I emailed my doctors. There were no abnormalities,” Torres said, going on to describe a difficult talk with the biological mother.
“I told her I couldn’t abort one of the children,” she said. “I could not emotionally and physically do that at nearly 13 weeks. I believe it will be killing this baby.”
The surrogate says she offered to adopt the female foetus instead of aborting her, but the couple refused.
Torres decided to go public to warn other would-be surrogates to avoid the heard-wrenching pitfalls she has encountered.
“I want other women not to be put in this situation,” Torres said. “They shouldn’t be forced to do something they don’t want to.”
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