Surrogate mom claims intended parents abandoned their baby during pregnancy

A video posted on TikTok from an alleged surrogate mother questioning her rights over the baby she’s been raising has racked up thousands of comments — and is raising questions about the ethics of surrogacy.

Chelsea Lugard posted a video of herself with a baby girl and asked followers for help deciding what she should do in the seemingly impossible situation. “I am a surrogate mother,” she wrote. “I helped a very rich couple birth a baby. Something happened and they got divorced after birthing the child. Neither of them wanted the child anymore.”

Lugard claims she was left with the baby, as both parents abandoned her and refused to pay any money towards the little girl’s care. Lugard struggled, but managed to get by for a year raising the child herself, and, understandably, they have become bonded to each other. But then the parents came back. “The [couple is] back together after a year and they want their child,” she continued. “I love her so much, I can’t let her go. What should I do?”

Comments from followers were mixed; some encouraged her to fight for custody, while others said that the little girl isn’t hers to keep. All agreed, however, that she had been treated horribly by the would-be parents.

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A similar situation happened with Sherri Shepherd, a former co-host of “The View.” Shepherd and her then-husband, Lamar Sally, used a donor egg and a surrogate mother to become parents, but halfway through the pregnancy, Shepherd and Sally decided to divorce. Shepherd abandoned the surrogate, took the baby off of her health insurance, refused to be listed as the parent on the birth certificate, would not pay child support, and was not present for the delivery. Those efforts ultimately failed, though, as a judge ruled that she be recognized as the child’s legal mother and be forced to pay child support.

Surrogacy has turned into a “Handmaid’s Tale”-style epidemic, with less-fortunate women like Lugard being hired by wealthy couples to have children for them. However, the women used as surrogates and the babies they carry are frequently treated not as human beings, but as commodities.

As Taslima Nasreen, a feminist and humanist activist, said in a previous statement, “Surrogacy is possible because there are poor women. Rich people always want the existence of poverty in the society for their own interests. If you badly need to raise a child, adopt a homeless one,” she said. “I won’t accept surrogacy until rich women become surrogate mom [sic]… [people] are abusing me for my comments on surrogacy. They claim it’s my stone-age idea to not rent wombs for making babies.”

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