Read Next
Investigative
SCAM: Abortionists lethally inject babies, then send moms to hospitals for 'stillbirths'
Carole Novielli
·Spotlight Articles
Human Interest·By Nancy Flanders
McKenna West isn't alone: Another surrogate refused abortion for HLHS
Stephanie Levesque Murphy was shocked when she began reading recent headlines about McKenna West, a surrogate who refused abortion following the baby’s diagnosis of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) — because she had lived through a similar situation herself.
Stephanie Levesque Murphy decided to become a surrogate to help people become parents.
After being accepted by an agency, she was matched with two couples, and had good relationships and pregnancies with both.
It was during her third surrogacy that an issue arose. Despite agreeing with the intended parents that abortion wasn't an option, after the baby was diagnosed with HLHS, they wanted her to abort.
Murphy refused to abort and the couple stopped financially supporting her and began making more demands. It also appeared they wouldn't be allowing surgery for the baby after birth — only "comfort care."
After giving birth, the baby was taken away and Murphy doesn't know his name or if he is even alive today.
After becoming pregnant with identical twin girls at age 20, Murphy felt blessed to have two babies while so many other people had tried unsuccessfully to have one. She wanted to become a surrogate to help couples with infertility. But she was turned away from a surrogacy agency because she was unwilling to have an abortion if the intended parents requested one.
Two years later, Murphy was able to find an agency that respected her stance against having an abortion, and she was quickly matched with a couple.
During their initial meeting, they all agreed that abortion was not an option. After carrying that baby successfully, Murphy was matched with another couple and had another positive outcome.
In 2017, Murphy matched with a third couple. She explained that on the introduction call, everything went as well as it ever had.
“They said they would never consider terminating unless my life was in danger or the doctors said that it was medically necessary,” Murphy told Live Action News. “I wasn’t even the one who said that first. I said, ‘That’s perfect. That’s how I feel.’”
She signed the contract, which she said had two separate sections about abortion. One clause said the surrogate had the right to abort or not abort. And in another, she explained, it stated the surrogate must follow the intended parents’ wishes when it came to abortion.
Murphy didn’t have a problem agreeing to this because they had all agreed that abortion would not be an option outside of an emergency.
But for some, "medically necessary" means aborting a child even for a treatable diagnosis.
Murphy became pregnant and everything went well until week 16.
Doctors found that the baby had HLHS, a rare and serious but largely treatable condition in which the left side of the heart doesn’t form properly. The doctors immediately sent Murphy to a pediatric cardiologist.
“The doctor was amazing, spent so much time with me, said we had to take it seriously but success rates were incredible. The baby would have an amazing life. The surgeries have successful outcomes as long as we jump on it and take care of it immediately,” she explained. “He called the parents and talked to them for about an hour. I sent them flowers with a note that said something like, ‘We’re in this together. We’ve got this.’”
She told Live Action News that she texted the parents to say she was thinking about them, and the father replied, “We love you. A big part of our pain is just knowing what you’re going through.”
She didn’t quite understand the full meaning of his message until the next day.
“The next morning, I got a call from the agency saying the parents wanted to abort,” she explained. “It was very businesslike on that call.”
Murphy hadn’t seen this coming. She didn’t want to abort the baby, but she knew the intended parents could stop paying her.
Yet for Murphy, it was about the baby first - a baby the parents said they wanted, but now wanted to abort because of a treatable condition.
She called her sister to talk about it and after hanging up the phone, she realized her young twin daughters had been listening to their conversation. They asked her if she was “going to kill the baby.”
“I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ If there’s anything in the world that would make you do the right thing, it’s your kids watching you,” she said. “I knew I needed to protect this baby.”
From then on, all communication between Murphy and the couple went through the agency. They scheduled a mediation meeting and the couple flew to Texas for it.
Murphy scheduled a sonogram while they were there. She hoped they would see their baby on the screen and change their minds. In fact, in Texas at the time, there was a waiting period law stating that a woman could not have an abortion until 24 hours after viewing an ultrasound.
But the parents didn’t even go to the appointment. In fact, they hadn’t been to any of her appointments, which Murphy considered “strange” compared to her previous surrogacy experiences.
After the ultrasound, Murphy went to a meeting with the doctors and the intended parents, in which the doctors discussed the three surgeries the baby would need. Murphy recalled:
“One of the doctors looked the father in the eyes and said, ‘I don’t know a single medical professional who would tell you to abort this baby.’ They still wanted an abortion.
I offered to adopt him… and they were so offended that I asked that.”
Though the intended parents continued to pay her medical bills and did not try to force her to abort, they stopped paying her or reimbursing her for missed work.
Then the intended father started bashing her to the doctors.
That’s when one of the doctors suggested that Murphy revoke the HIPAA paperwork she signed that had allowed the doctors to release medical information to the parents.
Murphy, however, did allow the parents to access the medical records. “I did stick to my contractual obligations in this regard,” she said, “which felt exponentially more vulnerable given the state of our relationship.”
Murphy began driving to Dallas for medical care, which affected her work hours and income. The intended parents became more demanding, and ultimately, Murphy had to find a second job.
When Murphy contacted the agency to tell them how it was affecting her, the intended parents accused her of wanting to withhold care from the baby.
Meanwhile, from what she was being told, the parents were planning to allow only "comfort care" for their son (whom Murphy calls Luca) at birth, and deny him the life-saving surgery. Murphy said:
“When I pressed the agency and doctors for answers, the response changed and I was told they weren't sure and would decide after the doctor assessed him at birth.
The one and only time I was told surgery would be performed is when the intended parents told the news they would be doing the surgery."
Ultimately, the parents issued Murphy a payment of $2,000 and agreed to pay her $500 a month to help care for the baby, and then a lump sum of $4,000 when she delivered. But she had to do whatever they said for the rest of the pregnancy.
“I had zero autonomy at all,” she said, and she worried they might not give the baby the life-saving surgery he needed at birth. “I felt so helpless.”
Thankfully, help was on the way.
Her best friend’s boss heard of her situation, and asked if he could hire attorneys for her. Those attorneys penned letters telling the parents to provide the baby with surgery and arguing that ‘comfort care’ is not health care.
Ultimately, the story was leaked to the press, and journalists contacted the intended parents.
While they told the press they planned to allow the surgeries, they later refused to pay Murphy the promised $4,000 because the story went public.
"Of course, they could tell the news anything — that doesn't confirm Luca was provided with the necessary surgery for his survival,” said Murphy.
She gave birth by C-section in December 2017, and though she was able to see Luca briefly, she never saw him again nor has she ever received an update or photo in the nine years since his birth.
She doesn’t know his given name or if he’s even alive.
“I wondered if, when he was taken from me, if he was leaving the room to his death, and if the next time I see him is when I pass along too,” said Murphy.
Murphy noted that since this experience in 2017, surrogacy laws and contracts have not changed.
“There’s no protection for surrogates,” she said. “The baby doesn’t have rights either in surrogacy..."
She said she would like to see...
Contracts that give the surrogates the right to say no to abortions and other medical procedures without the fear of legal or financial backlash.
Dispute protocols in contracts for when something unexpected happens.
Guaranteed prefunded postpartum mental health care available to surrogates after delivery.
Protocol to appoint a guardian ad litem to give the baby independent protections.
Waiting period abortion laws that ensure the biological, intended parents view an ultrasound, not just the surrogate.
True informed consent for surrogates regarding how much of their lives is scrutinized.
“You’re carrying someone else’s child and they might want you to eat a certain way; they care about your lifestyle. It all affects you in your daily life,” she said, adding, “It’s not informed consent when you agree to all the terms and then they change their wishes.”
When Murphy first heard surrogate McKenna West’s story, she was shocked. “I thought me going through that experience was a complete anomaly," she said. “I had no idea that it would ever happen again — the same exact diagnosis.”
It reignited her desire to change the laws and the contract wording.
Since then, she’s heard even more horror stories from the surrogacy industry and learned of the many ethical concerns with the practice.
“I understand taking the baby [from the surrogate at birth], but at the end of the day, that’s not putting the baby first. Birth is already traumatic. The baby needs to regulate its heart rate and body temperature and vitals. It makes me so sad that in a situation like mine, that it would have helped the baby to do skin to skin with me,” Murphy said. “Instead he was immediately ripped from me."
She added, "It makes me sad to think about, as much as I loved my surrogacies and would hate to see it completely disappear, how do you legally and ethically regulate such an industry?”
As Live Action News has reported, research shows that taking babies from their birth mother — whether biologically related or not — causes immense trauma, and can permanently alter a child’s adult brain function later in life.
This can be true even with adoption at birth. The difference is that adoption exists to heal a wound created when biological parents are unable to care for a child. Surrogacy, however, deliberately creates a child with the intention of creating that wound by separating that child from his or her birth mother immediately after delivery.
Many women choose to become surrogates with good intentions, but unfortunately, there are many ethical issues involved in surrogacy:
It involves creating embryos in a lab to then test them and grade them, deciding which ones make the cut and which should be discarded.
It also involves paying a woman for the use of her body, which means she is often an underprivileged woman and her dignity is often violated.
Surrogates are often treated as second class citizens, with the intended parents acting as though they own the woman for the duration of the pregnancy.
There are cases like Murphy’s and West’s in which a woman is asked to undergo a risky abortion procedure on a baby she has been bonding with for months.
Then there’s the issue of taking the baby immediately from his birth mother, the only mother he’s ever known and the person to whom he is the most bonded.
Wanting a child is natural and good. But when it comes to the fertility industry’s lack of regulation and overwhelming ethical concerns, the ends do not justify the means.
"If McKenna's and my story echo anything," said Murphy, "it needs to echo this: Something must change. Now. "
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Carole Novielli
·
Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·
Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
·
Guest Column
Kelli Stelter
·
Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·
Human Interest
Bridget Sielicki
·
Abortion Pill
Nancy Flanders
·
Abortion Pill
Nancy Flanders
·
Investigative
Nancy Flanders
·
Analysis
Nancy Flanders
·Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
·Human Interest·By Nancy Flanders
McKenna West isn't alone: Another surrogate refused abortion for HLHS
Stephanie Levesque Murphy was shocked when she began reading recent headlines about McKenna West, a surrogate who refused abortion following the baby’s diagnosis of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) — because she had lived through a similar situation herself.
Stephanie Levesque Murphy decided to become a surrogate to help people become parents.
After being accepted by an agency, she was matched with two couples, and had good relationships and pregnancies with both.
It was during her third surrogacy that an issue arose. Despite agreeing with the intended parents that abortion wasn't an option, after the baby was diagnosed with HLHS, they wanted her to abort.
Murphy refused to abort and the couple stopped financially supporting her and began making more demands. It also appeared they wouldn't be allowing surgery for the baby after birth — only "comfort care."
After giving birth, the baby was taken away and Murphy doesn't know his name or if he is even alive today.
After becoming pregnant with identical twin girls at age 20, Murphy felt blessed to have two babies while so many other people had tried unsuccessfully to have one. She wanted to become a surrogate to help couples with infertility. But she was turned away from a surrogacy agency because she was unwilling to have an abortion if the intended parents requested one.
Two years later, Murphy was able to find an agency that respected her stance against having an abortion, and she was quickly matched with a couple.
During their initial meeting, they all agreed that abortion was not an option. After carrying that baby successfully, Murphy was matched with another couple and had another positive outcome.
In 2017, Murphy matched with a third couple. She explained that on the introduction call, everything went as well as it ever had.
“They said they would never consider terminating unless my life was in danger or the doctors said that it was medically necessary,” Murphy told Live Action News. “I wasn’t even the one who said that first. I said, ‘That’s perfect. That’s how I feel.’”
She signed the contract, which she said had two separate sections about abortion. One clause said the surrogate had the right to abort or not abort. And in another, she explained, it stated the surrogate must follow the intended parents’ wishes when it came to abortion.
Murphy didn’t have a problem agreeing to this because they had all agreed that abortion would not be an option outside of an emergency.
But for some, "medically necessary" means aborting a child even for a treatable diagnosis.
Murphy became pregnant and everything went well until week 16.
Doctors found that the baby had HLHS, a rare and serious but largely treatable condition in which the left side of the heart doesn’t form properly. The doctors immediately sent Murphy to a pediatric cardiologist.
“The doctor was amazing, spent so much time with me, said we had to take it seriously but success rates were incredible. The baby would have an amazing life. The surgeries have successful outcomes as long as we jump on it and take care of it immediately,” she explained. “He called the parents and talked to them for about an hour. I sent them flowers with a note that said something like, ‘We’re in this together. We’ve got this.’”
She told Live Action News that she texted the parents to say she was thinking about them, and the father replied, “We love you. A big part of our pain is just knowing what you’re going through.”
She didn’t quite understand the full meaning of his message until the next day.
“The next morning, I got a call from the agency saying the parents wanted to abort,” she explained. “It was very businesslike on that call.”
Murphy hadn’t seen this coming. She didn’t want to abort the baby, but she knew the intended parents could stop paying her.
Yet for Murphy, it was about the baby first - a baby the parents said they wanted, but now wanted to abort because of a treatable condition.
She called her sister to talk about it and after hanging up the phone, she realized her young twin daughters had been listening to their conversation. They asked her if she was “going to kill the baby.”
“I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ If there’s anything in the world that would make you do the right thing, it’s your kids watching you,” she said. “I knew I needed to protect this baby.”
From then on, all communication between Murphy and the couple went through the agency. They scheduled a mediation meeting and the couple flew to Texas for it.
Murphy scheduled a sonogram while they were there. She hoped they would see their baby on the screen and change their minds. In fact, in Texas at the time, there was a waiting period law stating that a woman could not have an abortion until 24 hours after viewing an ultrasound.
But the parents didn’t even go to the appointment. In fact, they hadn’t been to any of her appointments, which Murphy considered “strange” compared to her previous surrogacy experiences.
After the ultrasound, Murphy went to a meeting with the doctors and the intended parents, in which the doctors discussed the three surgeries the baby would need. Murphy recalled:
“One of the doctors looked the father in the eyes and said, ‘I don’t know a single medical professional who would tell you to abort this baby.’ They still wanted an abortion.
I offered to adopt him… and they were so offended that I asked that.”
Though the intended parents continued to pay her medical bills and did not try to force her to abort, they stopped paying her or reimbursing her for missed work.
Then the intended father started bashing her to the doctors.
That’s when one of the doctors suggested that Murphy revoke the HIPAA paperwork she signed that had allowed the doctors to release medical information to the parents.
Murphy, however, did allow the parents to access the medical records. “I did stick to my contractual obligations in this regard,” she said, “which felt exponentially more vulnerable given the state of our relationship.”
Murphy began driving to Dallas for medical care, which affected her work hours and income. The intended parents became more demanding, and ultimately, Murphy had to find a second job.
When Murphy contacted the agency to tell them how it was affecting her, the intended parents accused her of wanting to withhold care from the baby.
Meanwhile, from what she was being told, the parents were planning to allow only "comfort care" for their son (whom Murphy calls Luca) at birth, and deny him the life-saving surgery. Murphy said:
“When I pressed the agency and doctors for answers, the response changed and I was told they weren't sure and would decide after the doctor assessed him at birth.
The one and only time I was told surgery would be performed is when the intended parents told the news they would be doing the surgery."
Ultimately, the parents issued Murphy a payment of $2,000 and agreed to pay her $500 a month to help care for the baby, and then a lump sum of $4,000 when she delivered. But she had to do whatever they said for the rest of the pregnancy.
“I had zero autonomy at all,” she said, and she worried they might not give the baby the life-saving surgery he needed at birth. “I felt so helpless.”
Thankfully, help was on the way.
Her best friend’s boss heard of her situation, and asked if he could hire attorneys for her. Those attorneys penned letters telling the parents to provide the baby with surgery and arguing that ‘comfort care’ is not health care.
Ultimately, the story was leaked to the press, and journalists contacted the intended parents.
While they told the press they planned to allow the surgeries, they later refused to pay Murphy the promised $4,000 because the story went public.
"Of course, they could tell the news anything — that doesn't confirm Luca was provided with the necessary surgery for his survival,” said Murphy.
She gave birth by C-section in December 2017, and though she was able to see Luca briefly, she never saw him again nor has she ever received an update or photo in the nine years since his birth.
She doesn’t know his given name or if he’s even alive.
“I wondered if, when he was taken from me, if he was leaving the room to his death, and if the next time I see him is when I pass along too,” said Murphy.
Murphy noted that since this experience in 2017, surrogacy laws and contracts have not changed.
“There’s no protection for surrogates,” she said. “The baby doesn’t have rights either in surrogacy..."
She said she would like to see...
Contracts that give the surrogates the right to say no to abortions and other medical procedures without the fear of legal or financial backlash.
Dispute protocols in contracts for when something unexpected happens.
Guaranteed prefunded postpartum mental health care available to surrogates after delivery.
Protocol to appoint a guardian ad litem to give the baby independent protections.
Waiting period abortion laws that ensure the biological, intended parents view an ultrasound, not just the surrogate.
True informed consent for surrogates regarding how much of their lives is scrutinized.
“You’re carrying someone else’s child and they might want you to eat a certain way; they care about your lifestyle. It all affects you in your daily life,” she said, adding, “It’s not informed consent when you agree to all the terms and then they change their wishes.”
When Murphy first heard surrogate McKenna West’s story, she was shocked. “I thought me going through that experience was a complete anomaly," she said. “I had no idea that it would ever happen again — the same exact diagnosis.”
It reignited her desire to change the laws and the contract wording.
Since then, she’s heard even more horror stories from the surrogacy industry and learned of the many ethical concerns with the practice.
“I understand taking the baby [from the surrogate at birth], but at the end of the day, that’s not putting the baby first. Birth is already traumatic. The baby needs to regulate its heart rate and body temperature and vitals. It makes me so sad that in a situation like mine, that it would have helped the baby to do skin to skin with me,” Murphy said. “Instead he was immediately ripped from me."
She added, "It makes me sad to think about, as much as I loved my surrogacies and would hate to see it completely disappear, how do you legally and ethically regulate such an industry?”
As Live Action News has reported, research shows that taking babies from their birth mother — whether biologically related or not — causes immense trauma, and can permanently alter a child’s adult brain function later in life.
This can be true even with adoption at birth. The difference is that adoption exists to heal a wound created when biological parents are unable to care for a child. Surrogacy, however, deliberately creates a child with the intention of creating that wound by separating that child from his or her birth mother immediately after delivery.
Many women choose to become surrogates with good intentions, but unfortunately, there are many ethical issues involved in surrogacy:
It involves creating embryos in a lab to then test them and grade them, deciding which ones make the cut and which should be discarded.
It also involves paying a woman for the use of her body, which means she is often an underprivileged woman and her dignity is often violated.
Surrogates are often treated as second class citizens, with the intended parents acting as though they own the woman for the duration of the pregnancy.
There are cases like Murphy’s and West’s in which a woman is asked to undergo a risky abortion procedure on a baby she has been bonding with for months.
Then there’s the issue of taking the baby immediately from his birth mother, the only mother he’s ever known and the person to whom he is the most bonded.
Wanting a child is natural and good. But when it comes to the fertility industry’s lack of regulation and overwhelming ethical concerns, the ends do not justify the means.
"If McKenna's and my story echo anything," said Murphy, "it needs to echo this: Something must change. Now. "
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Carole Novielli
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
·Guest Column
Kelli Stelter
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest
Bridget Sielicki
·Abortion Pill
Nancy Flanders
·Abortion Pill
Nancy Flanders
·Investigative
Nancy Flanders
·Analysis
Nancy Flanders
·Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
·