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Surrogate says gay couple literally 'ran away' with baby, leaving her on the street
A woman in Argentina known only as Belén, who says she served as a surrogate to a wealthy gay couple, is speaking out about the horrific treatment she allegedly endured.
A mother to three children and living with an abusive ex-boyfriend, Belén saw an ad seeking surrogates and thought it could be a way out for her and her children.
She agreed to be a surrogate for a wealthy gay couple, who promised to help her move out of the home she shared with her abuser.
They reportedly refused to pay her and did not help her find another place to live.
When she refused to sign the consent forms allowing them to take the baby immediately after childbirth, she said they screamed at and pressured her for six hours in the hospital until she gave in.
They then reportedly took the baby out of her arms and left her with no money outside of the hospital.
Belén's horror story was laid out in an interview with the Daily Mail.
The outlet reported that in 2022, she was 31 and working as a waitress to support her three children. She also was living with an abusive ex-boyfriend, and was anxious to escape.
She saw an ad seeking surrogates on Facebook, and thought it could give her the money she needed to leave.
"When I saw the post, I was at a point where I was emotionally exhausted from constantly trying to survive and support my three children," she said. "I was desperate to get out of the violent situation I was in at home."
She contacted the couple and met them at a cafe; after a short conversation, she agreed to be a surrogate for them.
She said they offered to pay her a small amount of tiered monthly payments based on how far along she was in her pregnancy, but the real attraction was their promise to help her find a new home. But from the beginning, she said she received little support:
I met them in March 2022. I didn’t get pregnant until January 2024. During those years, I was spending my own money to travel and undergo fertility procedures, and taking time off work to recover. They gave me no money during this period.
She said she had to beg just to receive money for food:
I called them sobbing because I couldn’t buy my children Christmas dinner. I didn’t have a penny. Only then did they give me just enough to buy some food.
In January of 2024, she was pregnant. It was not clear if Belén was a gestational surrogate — meaning the baby was biologically related to her — or not.
Once pregnant, Belén thought she would begin receiving the promised monthly payments, but money never came, even after she lost her job because she had to take time off due to pregnancy complications.
She was struggling to buy food, and her radiator also broke, meaning she and her family were struggling to keep warm in the cold. The purchasing parents allegedly shrugged this off as Belén's "hormones."
She said:
By the sixth month, I had still not received any money from them. They didn’t even give me the 120,000 pesos that I had originally been promised. I was crying and saying, "This can’t be happening." I reached the point where I had nothing to eat. I was thinking, "I’m pregnant, I’m doing this for them, and they are giving me nothing."
After appointments, however, she said the purchasing parents would take her to eat at a fancy restaurant before sending her home to her starving children. She told her therapist she felt like "a little dog that gets taken for a walk once a month."
And all the while, the thought of being separated from her baby terrified her.
"I loved my baby very much. I had already bonded with him - it was impossible for me not to," she said. "I kept thinking, 'How can it be that I have to give this baby away? I’m the one taking care of him. I’m doing everything so that he is okay, and then I have to give him to people he doesn’t even know, who were barely there for me.'"
After her constant pleading, the couple eventually gave her 1 million pesos (roughly $660), but it was nowhere near enough.
The couple arranged for Belén to have a therapist, but she felt it was another opportunity to manipulate her.
"I would cry to [the therapist], saying ‘these people are using me. They’re using me. I don’t want them to use me,'" she recalled. "He would scold me for not trusting them. He said they had good intentions. I was abandoned as a child. I had been homeless. He saw all those weaknesses and used them to manipulate me."
And yet the couple was exerting ever more control over her life, right down to the underwear she would wear after giving birth. "I realized that I had simply been their incubator - the cheapest one they could find that worked for them," she said.
In September of 2024, she was scheduled to have a c-section, but the thought only made her more upset.
"With ordinary pregnancies, everyone understands that the baby is going to seek out its mother, her smell, the connection, what is familiar," she said. "But with these pregnancies, it seems as though all of that is erased."
She asked for her son, named Piero, to be placed onto her chest after birth and be able to see his placenta, wanting to take advantage of as much time to bond with him as possible. The couple was allowed in the delivery room, and shortly afterwards, Piero was taken to the NICU because he looked pale.
Belén, meanwhile, was taken to a hospital suite, in which the couple had the larger front room, and she was left locked in a back bedroom to recover.
"They kept me shut away in the room at the back," she said. "They literally left me locked in the room. They would close the door while they stayed at the front with their visitors. From the moment he was born, I only saw them when they came to make me sign paperwork relating to neonatology. Nobody came to check on me."
When they came to ask her to sign the discharge forms after being neglected for days, she grew angry... and refused.
I thought, 'Are you kidding me? They haven't come once and now they’re sending the nurse to me so that I can sign the discharge?'
Piero's fathers came into my room and verbally attacked me. The grandmothers came in and insulted me. All four of them were screaming at me while I was lying helplessly in bed. They called me a baby thief, and threatened to take my children and send me to jail. The lawyer kept telling me that I was going to face criminal charges.
They told me that if I didn’t sign the discharge papers and leave, they were going to report me for child abandonment.
After six hours of this, Belén gave in and signed the forms.
She was allowed to see Piero one final time, as Argentinian law requires the mother to take the baby out of the hospital.
She said as soon as they were outside, one of the purchasing fathers snatched the baby out of her arms and ran away with him:
I held Piero in my arms at that moment. He was making little noises and crying, and I knew that he recognized me. We walked out together and crossed the clinic's exit. Then he ran. Literally ran away from me with the baby. I was left there on the street with my c-section wound, without any battery on my phone, with nothing. I had to go to a nearby cafe to charge my phone and call an Uber to get home.
Since then, she said she hasn't seen Piero once, despite the couple promising she would remain part of his life.
Belén has now become an outspoken opponent of surrogacy.
"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," she said. "We don’t go around violating other people’s bodies because we want something."
She also questioned what Piero would know about his birth:
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?'
Belén's story is an increasingly common one among surrogates, in which the surrogate attempting to love and protect the child she carried is treated like a criminal for having any continued interest in the wellbeing of that child, despite having bonded with the baby in the womb.
The story of surrogate McKenna West is a good example of this, as she has been portrayed as attempting to "steal" a child whom the purchasing parents wanted aborted; instead, West fought to give the baby boy a chance in life and now the parents are suing her for more than she was paid by them.
Surrogate Stephanie Levesque Murphy was also treated poorly after she fought for the life of a baby with a health condition. She even offered to adopt the baby, and the purchasing parents were "offended"; they wanted the baby to be aborted instead. After the story went public due to Murphy's refusal, the parents refused to pay Murphy the thousands of dollars she was promised.
But even for preborn babies without health conditions, the surrogates are frequently treated like mere carriers or "incubators" as Belén was, carrying a child for someone willing to pay a large sum of money to obtain one. This industry is highly unregulated and is growing quickly, putting children in real danger and treating the human mother-child bond as if it either doesn't matter or doesn't exist.
We don't treat animals this way, and humans deserve better.
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.
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·Surrogate says gay couple literally 'ran away' with baby, leaving her on the street
A woman in Argentina known only as Belén, who says she served as a surrogate to a wealthy gay couple, is speaking out about the horrific treatment she allegedly endured.
A mother to three children and living with an abusive ex-boyfriend, Belén saw an ad seeking surrogates and thought it could be a way out for her and her children.
She agreed to be a surrogate for a wealthy gay couple, who promised to help her move out of the home she shared with her abuser.
They reportedly refused to pay her and did not help her find another place to live.
When she refused to sign the consent forms allowing them to take the baby immediately after childbirth, she said they screamed at and pressured her for six hours in the hospital until she gave in.
They then reportedly took the baby out of her arms and left her with no money outside of the hospital.
Belén's horror story was laid out in an interview with the Daily Mail.
The outlet reported that in 2022, she was 31 and working as a waitress to support her three children. She also was living with an abusive ex-boyfriend, and was anxious to escape.
She saw an ad seeking surrogates on Facebook, and thought it could give her the money she needed to leave.
"When I saw the post, I was at a point where I was emotionally exhausted from constantly trying to survive and support my three children," she said. "I was desperate to get out of the violent situation I was in at home."
She contacted the couple and met them at a cafe; after a short conversation, she agreed to be a surrogate for them.
She said they offered to pay her a small amount of tiered monthly payments based on how far along she was in her pregnancy, but the real attraction was their promise to help her find a new home. But from the beginning, she said she received little support:
I met them in March 2022. I didn’t get pregnant until January 2024. During those years, I was spending my own money to travel and undergo fertility procedures, and taking time off work to recover. They gave me no money during this period.
She said she had to beg just to receive money for food:
I called them sobbing because I couldn’t buy my children Christmas dinner. I didn’t have a penny. Only then did they give me just enough to buy some food.
In January of 2024, she was pregnant. It was not clear if Belén was a gestational surrogate — meaning the baby was biologically related to her — or not.
Once pregnant, Belén thought she would begin receiving the promised monthly payments, but money never came, even after she lost her job because she had to take time off due to pregnancy complications.
She was struggling to buy food, and her radiator also broke, meaning she and her family were struggling to keep warm in the cold. The purchasing parents allegedly shrugged this off as Belén's "hormones."
She said:
By the sixth month, I had still not received any money from them. They didn’t even give me the 120,000 pesos that I had originally been promised. I was crying and saying, "This can’t be happening." I reached the point where I had nothing to eat. I was thinking, "I’m pregnant, I’m doing this for them, and they are giving me nothing."
After appointments, however, she said the purchasing parents would take her to eat at a fancy restaurant before sending her home to her starving children. She told her therapist she felt like "a little dog that gets taken for a walk once a month."
And all the while, the thought of being separated from her baby terrified her.
"I loved my baby very much. I had already bonded with him - it was impossible for me not to," she said. "I kept thinking, 'How can it be that I have to give this baby away? I’m the one taking care of him. I’m doing everything so that he is okay, and then I have to give him to people he doesn’t even know, who were barely there for me.'"
After her constant pleading, the couple eventually gave her 1 million pesos (roughly $660), but it was nowhere near enough.
The couple arranged for Belén to have a therapist, but she felt it was another opportunity to manipulate her.
"I would cry to [the therapist], saying ‘these people are using me. They’re using me. I don’t want them to use me,'" she recalled. "He would scold me for not trusting them. He said they had good intentions. I was abandoned as a child. I had been homeless. He saw all those weaknesses and used them to manipulate me."
And yet the couple was exerting ever more control over her life, right down to the underwear she would wear after giving birth. "I realized that I had simply been their incubator - the cheapest one they could find that worked for them," she said.
In September of 2024, she was scheduled to have a c-section, but the thought only made her more upset.
"With ordinary pregnancies, everyone understands that the baby is going to seek out its mother, her smell, the connection, what is familiar," she said. "But with these pregnancies, it seems as though all of that is erased."
She asked for her son, named Piero, to be placed onto her chest after birth and be able to see his placenta, wanting to take advantage of as much time to bond with him as possible. The couple was allowed in the delivery room, and shortly afterwards, Piero was taken to the NICU because he looked pale.
Belén, meanwhile, was taken to a hospital suite, in which the couple had the larger front room, and she was left locked in a back bedroom to recover.
"They kept me shut away in the room at the back," she said. "They literally left me locked in the room. They would close the door while they stayed at the front with their visitors. From the moment he was born, I only saw them when they came to make me sign paperwork relating to neonatology. Nobody came to check on me."
When they came to ask her to sign the discharge forms after being neglected for days, she grew angry... and refused.
I thought, 'Are you kidding me? They haven't come once and now they’re sending the nurse to me so that I can sign the discharge?'
Piero's fathers came into my room and verbally attacked me. The grandmothers came in and insulted me. All four of them were screaming at me while I was lying helplessly in bed. They called me a baby thief, and threatened to take my children and send me to jail. The lawyer kept telling me that I was going to face criminal charges.
They told me that if I didn’t sign the discharge papers and leave, they were going to report me for child abandonment.
After six hours of this, Belén gave in and signed the forms.
She was allowed to see Piero one final time, as Argentinian law requires the mother to take the baby out of the hospital.
She said as soon as they were outside, one of the purchasing fathers snatched the baby out of her arms and ran away with him:
I held Piero in my arms at that moment. He was making little noises and crying, and I knew that he recognized me. We walked out together and crossed the clinic's exit. Then he ran. Literally ran away from me with the baby. I was left there on the street with my c-section wound, without any battery on my phone, with nothing. I had to go to a nearby cafe to charge my phone and call an Uber to get home.
Since then, she said she hasn't seen Piero once, despite the couple promising she would remain part of his life.
Belén has now become an outspoken opponent of surrogacy.
"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," she said. "We don’t go around violating other people’s bodies because we want something."
She also questioned what Piero would know about his birth:
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?'
Belén's story is an increasingly common one among surrogates, in which the surrogate attempting to love and protect the child she carried is treated like a criminal for having any continued interest in the wellbeing of that child, despite having bonded with the baby in the womb.
The story of surrogate McKenna West is a good example of this, as she has been portrayed as attempting to "steal" a child whom the purchasing parents wanted aborted; instead, West fought to give the baby boy a chance in life and now the parents are suing her for more than she was paid by them.
Surrogate Stephanie Levesque Murphy was also treated poorly after she fought for the life of a baby with a health condition. She even offered to adopt the baby, and the purchasing parents were "offended"; they wanted the baby to be aborted instead. After the story went public due to Murphy's refusal, the parents refused to pay Murphy the thousands of dollars she was promised.
But even for preborn babies without health conditions, the surrogates are frequently treated like mere carriers or "incubators" as Belén was, carrying a child for someone willing to pay a large sum of money to obtain one. This industry is highly unregulated and is growing quickly, putting children in real danger and treating the human mother-child bond as if it either doesn't matter or doesn't exist.
We don't treat animals this way, and humans deserve better.
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!
Nancy Flanders
·Fact Checks
Nancy Flanders
·Analysis
Angeline Tan
·Analysis
Bridget Sielicki
·Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·Human Interest
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·One of the most shocking stories of #surrogacy #exploitation I've ever read: - A single mother of three working as a waitress and struggling to feed her kids - Living with a physically abusive ex-boyfriend - Answered a wealthy gay couple's Facebook post. They agreed to pay Show more
