Modern science can give those who are unable to procreate on their own the gift of parenthood.
They just needed to find a surrogate.
But things can go wrong during this process, leading to uncharted legal territory. In Crystal Kelley’s case, she had to flee across the U.S. with the unborn child where the law recognized her as the baby’s mother in order to prevent the baby from being aborted.
A New York family, who already had three children, hired the Connecticut resident to carry and give birth to their fourth child.
The then 29-year-old planned used the surrogacy fee of $22,000 to pay the bills and help her raise her two daughters.
Kelley was matched with the family through a surrogacy agency.
“They offered to come and meet me near my home,” Kelley told PEOPLE. “It was very nice when we met. I really liked them.”
She became pregnant after she had two frozen embryos from the family implanted in her.
The family had their three children through in-vitro fertilization and had the two embryos left over.
“She was very emotional as she talked about how they only had two embryos left and they were reaching the end of their five-year storage time and they had to make the decision very soon whether they were going to keep them or get rid of them,” Kelley explained.
The pregnancy was off to a good start as was Kelley’s relationship with the family. But that changed when Kelley went for her 21-week anatomy scan.
Kelley was tipped off that something might be wrong by the look on the technician’s face.
Then the baby’s biological mother started sending her alarming texts.
“”She kept saying, ‘There’s something wrong with the baby. There’s something wrong with the baby. What are we going to do?’ ” Kelley told CNN. “She was frantic. She was panicking.”
The scan showed that the baby girl had a cleft palate, a cyst on her brain, heart defects, and could have Down syndrome.
But the family allegedly wasn’t interested in raising a child that would have a significant disability and would require several surgeries just to survive.
So, they requested an abortion. Their original contract stated that the family could request an abortion at any time for any reason, but Kelley refused and wanted the clause taken out.
They settled on a clause that would allow abortion only if there was a “severe fetal abnormality.”
Doctors told Kelley the baby would be able to survive the pregnancy but probably only have a 25 percent chance of living a normal life.
The parents said that their three children were all born prematurely and two of them spent months in the hospital and still had medical problems. They felt the more humane solution was to abort.
They offered Kelley $10,000 to abort the pregnancy. Kelley asked for $15,000.
Negotiations fell apart after that.
The parents said they would give the baby up and that meant that the child would be put into foster care. At this point Kelley decided that she wanted to give the child a chance at life but didn’t want the baby to get “lost in the system.” She also didn’t want to be a mother to the child. Her finances and existing children would make that impossible but she was determined to find an adoptive family that could care for the child.
The family’s lawyer later told her that she was in breach of contract and that she could be sued for $8,000, plus medical expenses, and legal fees.
Kelley got a lawyer of her own and fled to Michigan.
“Michigan recognizes the person who gives birth as the child’s mother,” Kelley’s lawyer told ABC News. “In cases where everyone’s in agreement, you can get a parentage out of the courts, with agreement of all the parties.”
In the end, the child was born with heart defects, a cleft palate, holoprosencephaly, and without hearing in her right ear which is deformed.
She will have to undergo several risky procedures.
Even with that, she may still be at risk of early death due to her holoprosencephaly.
“She’s still a happy little girl who’s going to bring joy into the lives of everyone who knows her,” Kelley said.
Kelley was able to find adoptive parents for the baby and says she will always fight for her.
“I will always be there for you, and I will never give up on you,” she wrote on her blog.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
