Surrogacy in Canada Online - Media Appearances

Our Media Appearances

This is a brief outline of most of our media appearances (with some stories added below).

Spring 2011	Slice Network	"Til Debt Do Us Part" with Gail Vaz-Oxlade	Tracy & Dan - Season 9 Episode #18
08/17/11	The Huron Expositor	"Kinburn-area woman runs website promoting surrogacy"	Susan Hundertmark (Read Article)
02/14/11	The National Post	"Keeping Surrogate Motherhood in the Family"	Sarah Boesveld
01/14/11	THIS Magazine	"Why Sally Rhoads Risked her Life 10 Times as a Surrogate"	Paul McLaughlin (Read Article)
10/06/10	The National Post	"Couple Urged Surrogate to Abort Fetus Due to Defect"	Tom Blackwell
01/01/08	Maxi	"Hand Aufs Herz" Sechsmal vermietete Sally Rhoads ihren Bauch - als Leihmutter.	Tina Kopperschmidt, Page 27 (German)
07/18/07	Sueddeudeutsche.de	"Rent a Mum"	Bernadette Calonego
05/21/07	MACLEANS	"Gay Man Seeks Perfect Woman"	Jessica Werb, Lifestyle (Read Article)
04/11/07	Chatelaine	"In Vitro We Trust"	Andrea Curtis, Page 75 (Read Article)
11/04/01	TVOntario	"More to Life"	Featuring Surrogate Moms, Joanne Wright & Sally Rhoads
08/18/01	The Globe & Mail	"My Search for an Egg & a Womb"	Margaret Wente, Section A11
08/16/01	The Globe & Mail	"Who Owns These Twins?"	Margaret Wente, Section A11
07/10/01	Women's Television Network	"Open for Discussion"	Featuring Teri Rypkema, Sally Rhoads & Dr. Jeremy Kredentser
03/30/01	Women's Television Network	"Current Affairs"	Interview with Collen Walsh
03/24/01	The Globe & Mail	"I Never Wanted to Keep Them"	Rebecca Caldwell, Section R21
03/23/01	Capital News Online	"The Morality of Renting Wombs"	Julie Grenier (Read Article)
02/16/01	The Toronto Star	"Netting a Newborn"	Hamida Ghafour, Section F
12/20/00	Stratford Beacon Herald	"A Christmas Miracle to be Remembered"	Laura Czekaj, Frontpage
08/31/00	Stratford Beacon Herald	"A Gift of Children"	Michelle Greene, Page 3

The National Post
February 14th, 2011
"Keeping Surrogate Motherhood in the Family"
By Sarah Boesveld

She had supported her daughter through years of trying, helping her through the anguish of failed pregnancies and rounds and rounds of in vitro fertilization.

When nothing worked, 61-year-old Kristine Casey offered the very last thing she could: her healthy, post-menopausal uterus.

Last week, the Virginia woman gave birth to Finnean Lee Connell via cesarean section at a hospital in Chicago, where her daughter Sara Connell lives.

While some have lauded the birth as miraculous, a sacrifice of love akin to donating a vital organ, ethicists and observers worry that it takes advances in infertility treatments too far.

“The central question is what’s in the best interest of that child?” said Margaret Somerville, a medical ethicist and founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine in Montreal. “I think in this case [the concern] is more the confusion of the relationships within the family.”

Family structures could be compromised if a child is confused about the roles, she said.

“I make a distinction between repairing nature when it fails and doing something that would never happen in nature,” she said. “A grandmother giving birth to her grandbaby is something that could never happen in nature, and so I’d say no, that’s really suspect.”

Canadians should expect more relatives to volunteer as surrogates in light of last December’s Supreme Court decision to keep payment for surrogacy a criminal act, said Sherry Levitan, a Toronto-based lawyer who specializes in third-party surrogacy law.

But it could also mean siblings or perhaps even parents could be pressured into offering up their body to surrogacy.

“The concern is not so much a mother caring for a child, but what if there are two siblings and one can’t carry? The parent could exert a lot of pressure on the other sibling to carry,” she said. “That raises a lot of red flags and we’re very concerned about those kinds of situations.”

Ms. Levitan, who calls the 61-year-old grandmother “an extraordinary woman,” said she sees about 10% of surrogacies involving relatives — mostly sisters and close childhood friends, which she counts as relatives.

“I think the real bonus is seeing your family member so happy,” she said. And women who have a relative for a surrogate also tend to be more trusting. Rarely is there a litany of do’s and don’ts handed down to a relative, whereas a paid surrogate, who is often a stranger, would have a number of restrictions, she said.

“There’s a very different shift of power during the pregnancy or even when they’re trying to get pregnant,” She said. “You can’t say to your mother or your sister, ‘You have an appointment next Tuesday at 8 a.m.’ You have to say, ‘Would it be convenient?’.”

At the end of the day, women who use family members as surrogates tend to be far more grateful, she said, seeing the surrogacy as an act of love.

Ms. Casey is not the first woman to give birth to her own grandchild. Ms. Levitan handled a case about five years ago in which a man’s mother carried his baby on his behalf.

“The mother came off hormone replacement therapy to do this,” she said. “It went beautifully. I think there was a little bit of friction between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, which is not unusual between any woman and the surrogate.”

In November 2008, 56-year-old Ohio woman Jaci Dalenberg carried her daughter’s identical twins, which were delivered by cesarean. In January 2004, a woman based in Gujarat, India, carried her grandchild on behalf of her daughter.

Ms. Levitan had never heard of a woman over 60 giving birth to a child even as a surrogate, but you do see older people stepping up as surrogates, said Sally Rhoads, who runs Surrogacy in Canada Online, an information, referral and support site for people considering surrogacy.

“Often a doctor will joke that a menopausal body is the ideal body to be cycling with,” she said. Women who are going through menopause are not ovulating, which provides better conditions for invitro fertilization, she said. An ideal surrogate is someone who has already had at least one child, and it’s recommended that surrogates have finished their own families before donating their bodies, because fertility can often be compromised with more and more births.

But of course older women also face greater risks. They must be in excellent health, without any pre-existing conditions, she said.

Ten and a half months ago, Gena Lucas’s step-mother gave birth to her healthy child Ava — and it was one of the best gifts anyone had ever given her.

Still, the Victoria, B.C., woman said she doesn’t treat her husband’s father’s wife Sue any differently than other grandparents involved. They get the same number of updates and phone calls about how little Ava is doing, she said.

“In the future, for sure there’s going to be an unbelievable bond when Ava realizes she’s respoonsible for her being here,” the 39-year-old said. Sue was 48 when Ava was born and now Ava shares a birthday with one of Sue’s daughters.

It had been 30 years since Ms. Casey last gave birth, but everything went smoothly during the delivery, Ms. Connell told the Chicago Tribune.

And when she heard her firstborn son cry, “I lost it,” Ms. Connell said. Everyone in the crowded operating room was overcome with emotion, according to hospital staff who attended the birth.

Ms. Casey intends to go back to Virginia and take on the traditional role of grandmother.

THIS Magazine
January 14th, 2010
"Why Sally Rhoads Risked Her Life 10 Times to be a Surrogate"
By Paul McLaughlin

Sally Rhoads is passionate about surrogacy. The 32-year-old mother of three (ages 12, seven and 10 months) lives near Stratford, Ontario. She has been a successful surrogate once and an unsuccessful one nine times. Although her commitment to surrogacy almost killed her, she remains an advocate for a practice that is highly restricted in Canada and banned in some U.S. states.

This: When did you first become interested in surrogacy?

Rhoads: After my first child in 1999. I had really enjoyed being pregnant and found it was easy for me. I was on the internet and came across some surrogacy boards. I realized there were a lot of couples that needed help having a baby. So I figured that’s one thing I know I can do.

This: At that time it wasn’t illegal in Canada to take money for surrogacy [it now is although “altruistic surrogacy” is permitted, except in Quebec where all surrogacy is banned]. Were you also motivated by money?

Rhoads: I just thought it was something you do, like organ donations. I wasn’t financially motivated whatsoever.

This: How did your husband feel about surrogacy?

Rhoads: He didn’t like the idea very much at the beginning because he didn’t understand it. When he learned it would be a gestational surrogacy, where I would be carrying an embryo created by the intended mother’s eggs and father’s sperm, their genetics, he decided it was OK.

This: How long after your child was born did you consider surrogacy?

Rhoads: Three months.

This: How did you choose a couple to help?

Rhoads: Through the internet. From March 1999 through September, I had more than 200 emails from couples, pretty well all from the U.S. I went with Heather and Sergey from Maryland. They said they would take care of all my expenses, including travel.

This: But you were eventually paid.

Rhoads: Much later, when we started talking about a contract; they brought it up. That’s what you do, especially in the U.S. You pay a monthly fee. Maybe $2,500 in the U.S. and $1,700 or $2,000 in Canada. For me it didn’t matter. They threw out $1,100, plus expenses. That was fine with us.

This: How was the pregnancy?

Rhoads: I had the embryo transfer in a clinic in New Jersey in April 2000. When I got pregnant, I got so sick my family doctor urged me to get an abortion. The morning sickness was so bad I ended up losing my job. I also got an infection from all the needles you have to inject yourself with. It felt as if I had the flu every day for months.

This: Did you start to wonder if you had made the right decision?

Rhoads: No. Never.

This: How did the rest of the pregnancy go?

Rhoads: We learned there were twins—actually, it had started out as triplets—so the sickness then made sense. They had to induce me at 37 weeks. So the birth was in Stratford, and Heather and Sergey weren’t there for it. They were both breech babies. And there was a prolapsed cord [where the umbilical cord emerges from the uterus before the fetus]. I ended up having a C-section. I had a boy and a girl, Peter and Victoria.

This: A question I’m sure you’re often asked is whether it was difficult to give up the babies.

Rhoads: Not at all. Heather had been with me through all the testing. The day they put the embryos in me she held my hand and cried the whole time. Right from that point, you see that those aren’t your children at all. So for me there was a huge detachment there.

This: How many more times did you act as a surrogate?

Rhoads: Nine.

This: Did any succeed?

Rhoads: No.

This: Do you know why?

Rhoads: Embryo problems…at the couple’s end.

This: Why did you keep trying?

Rhoads: I never really wanted to do another surrogacy. But the couples would have the worst stories imaginable. One couple had spent $150,000 on IVF. They had lost their home, everything, trying to have a baby. They would plead with me to help them, and I always relented. One, in 2005, almost killed me. I had just had a miscarriage from another surrogacy and I told myself I was through. But a couple came from China. They had lost three babies. They said “please put our last embryos in you.” How could I say no? They put three embryos in me and I got pregnant. A couple of weeks later I was bleeding and they said it looks as if you miscarried, and that was the end of it. A week later I was feeling awful. I went to the hospital and my blood pressure was almost not there. Lo and behold, I had twin babies in my left tube. They had gotten between the tube and the ovary, and I got a big clot and it had ruptured. I lost half my blood and needed emergency surgery. They said I would have died if I hadn’t come in.

This: So that was the last surrogacy?

Rhoads: No. I had three more transfers after that.

This: When was your last try?

Rhoads: January 2008. I’m retired now. I’m divorced and my new partner wants to have more children and is worried that surrogacy might prevent that. I’ve already lost a fallopian tube because of it.

This: Have your views of surrogacy changed at all over the years?

Rhoads: In some ways. Altruistic surrogacy is very idealistic. I don’t really agree with it anymore. I strongly believe compensation should be involved unless it’s like your sister or a relative you have a connection with. I’ve seen a lot of surrogates go through this with altruistic ideas and come out of it feeling very used and hurt at the end. Most couples don’t want any connection with you after the birth. When you’re pregnant and you have your own baby, you come home with a baby. When you’re a surrogate you come home to nothing, not so much as a picture.

This: Is that what happened with Heather and Sergey?

Rhoads: No. But they got divorced a couple of years later. And I wondered, God, what I went through for these people, and they didn’t even stick together. Heather and I became close and we still talk almost every week. The twins [who are 10] know all about me. They think it was neat they were born in Canada. They added me as friends on Facebook.

This: What did you get out of surrogacy?

Rhoads: I loved it. I was always so happy to find out I was pregnant for a couple. And I always felt so cheated if I couldn’t help them. I guess, for me, it was almost addictive.

The National Post
October 6th, 2010
"Couple Urged Surrogate to Abort Fetus Due to Defect"
By Tom Blackwell

When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.

Under the agreement the trio signed, the surrogate’s choice would mean absolving the couple of any responsibility for raising the child, the treating doctor told a recent fertility-medicine conference.

Dr. Ken Seethram, revealing the unusual situation for the first time, said it raises questions about whether government oversight of contracts between mothers and “commissioning” parents is needed.

A bioethicist who has studied the issue extensively argues that contract law should not apply to the transaction, unless human life is to be treated like widgets in a factory.

“Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” said Juliet Guichon of the University of Calgary. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”

Prof. Guichon speculated that courts likely would not honour a surrogacy contract, drawing instead on family law that would require the biological parents to support the child.

It appears no surrogacy contract has actually been contested in a Canadian court, however, leaving the transactions in some legal limbo.

Dr. Seethram’s presentation to the Canadian Society of Fertility and Andrology conference suggested the accord signed by the three in B.C. may have undermined the surrogate’s right to make decisions in a “non-coercive” environment.

The surrogate, a mother of two children of her own, eventually chose to have the abortion, partly because of her own family obligations.

A former surrogate who helps parents and mothers make such arrangements said the parties should agree on what they would do if defects are discovered during pregnancy, ensuring they have the same views on abortion. If a dispute still arises, however, parents ought to be protected, said Sally Rhoads of SurrogacyInCanada.ca.

“The baby that’s being carried is their baby. It’s usually their genetic offspring,” she said. “Why should the intended parents be forced to raise a child they didn’t want? It’s not fair.”

In some U.S. jurisdictions, in fact, parents can even sue a surrogate to recoup their payments if the woman insists on going ahead with a pregnancy against their wishes, Ms. Rhoads said.

Disputes are rare here, but she said it is usually surrogates who end up feeling most aggrieved. She recalled one case where the mother conceived twins, the parents asked for a procedure to reduce the number of fetuses to one, and the whole pregnancy was inadvertently lost.

In three other Canadian cases, surrogates are now raising the babies after the commissioning couples got divorced and backed out, Ms. Rhoads said.

The conference presentation disclosed no names or other personal details on the B.C. case, but Dr. Seethram said it occurred within the past year.

The surrogate was implanted with an embryo created with the parents’ egg and sperm. An ultrasound during the first trimester showed the fetus was likely to have trisomy 21, the genetic abnormality that leads to Down syndrome. A further test confirmed the diagnosis.

The couple and the surrogate always got along and their disagreement on what to do never became acrimonious or tense, Dr. Seethram said. But the physician with Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine said it appeared to him that the three had never seriously considered such a scenario before the pregnancy.

“They were certainly quite shocked,” he said. “Obviously, [the parents] had come on a long journey before commissioning the surrogacy, [but] all they were thinking about was success.”

It is an issue of growing importance. While there appear to be no national statistics, experts in the field say that surrogacy arrangements are becoming increasingly commonplace in Canada.

Larry Kahn, a Vancouver lawyer who specializes in assisted-reproduction and adoption law, said he has arranged more than 35 surrogacy contracts in each of the past three years, up from barely 15 a decade ago.

He said the surrogate is always represented by her own lawyer, but the contracts usually absolve the parents of responsibility when a defect is found and the surrogate refuses an abortion. He said he knows of no disputes involving any of his clients, though he acknowledged that it is possible the courts would not recognize the contract if a legal battle did ensue.

Dr. Seethram said he believes that the federal government will eventually pass regulations to address the situation, but Mr. Kahn said he doubts Ottawa will get involved.

Françoise Baylis, a Dalhousie University bioethicist, said the case highlights how human life can become like a commodity in such transactions.

“The child is seen by the commissioning parents as a product, and in this case a substandard product because of a genetic condition,” Prof. Baylis said.

Sueddeudeutsche.de
July 18th, 2007
"Rent a Mum"
By Bernadette Calonego

Many infertile couples look for surrogate mothers - and find them in Canada. Because surrogacy arrangements are more common desperate couples offer a lot of money. But it is forbidden to pay fees to Canadian surrogate mothers.

They journey from France and Australia, from Germany, Great Britain and Saudi Arabia. They look for a surrogate mother - and they find them in Canada. In the past five years the number of foreign customers doubled itself more than, says the owner of an agency in Toronto, which matches surrogate mothers. Also in the fertility clinic Life Quest Centre in Toronto this is confirmed.

Contrary to most European countries Canada permits surrogacy arrangements. In the United States this affair is big "business", says attorney Sherry Levitan, who helps couples with contracts with surrogate mothers. In Canada surrogacy is more widely accepted, and different from the USA the surrogacy pregnancy and birth is covered by provincial health insurance. That makes the country at first sight a low-priced destination for infertile couples.

A law from the year 2004 forbids payment to Canadian surrogate mothers however it allows that only expenses be paid to them. The Canadian health authorities did not specify so far however yet clearly, what could be meant exactly with "expenses".

The restriction, then critics criticize, would cause infertile couples to pay surrogate mothers secretly. Thus the involved ones risk a term of imprisonment of up to ten years or a penalty up to 350,000 euro ($500,000CAD). This law almost drives infertile couples and surrogate mothers into the unlawfulness, say the critics.

On the question, why at all without remuneration would women want to be surrogate mothers, Canadian attorney Sherry Levitan answers: "Some women enjoy being pregnant more than others". Sally Rhoads, a former surrogate mother, that maintains a web page, reports that she receives still a great many emails inquiring from foreign countries. She says, infertile couples are offering money to Canadian surrogates and it gives ways to go around the law approximately by verbal arrangements. Measure Rhoads finds therefore, the government must absolutely permit the payment to surrogate mothers.

Until the legal conditions are clarified in Canada, and it's experts are united, infertile couples should be very careful and consult with lawyers in every detail before deciding to proceed.

MACLEANS
May 21st, 2007
"Gay Man Seeks Perfect Woman"
By Jessica Werb

Mac and Ella Comber were delivered by C-section on Sept. 23, 2006, weighing 5 lb. 10 oz. and 5 lb. 11 oz. respectively. Both were strong and healthy, though Mac spent a short time in an incubator to help clear some fluid from his lungs. Ella, with her olive skin and dark hair, had her mother's complexion, while Mac, with his fairer skin, looked more like his father.

A week after their birth, Mac and Ella's mother nursed them for the last time in the hospital, bid their father and the twins farewell, and returned home to her husband and two daughters aged 7 and 5. The twins then flew with their father to his home in Vancouver, which had been painstakingly prepared for their arrival.

Confused? There's an explanation, though it's not a particularly simple one. Scott Comber, Mac and Ella's father, is a 45-year-old gay single man; their mother is a 27-year-old heterosexual married woman. (She requested anonymity. We'll call her Jennifer Dickson.) Dickson agreed to be Comber's traditional surrogate -- a controversial arrangement in which a birth mother both conceives and carries a child for someone else, in contrast to the more common gestational surrogacy, which involves carrying an embryo that is not genetically linked to the surrogate.

Finding a woman who would both conceive and bear him a child was easy, says Comber. "I just googled surrogates and mothers, and up popped these surrogate sites," he recalls. After reading through profiles of potential surrogate mothers on surrogatemomsonline.com, he found Dickson, a former egg donor and gestational surrogate. "We emailed and talked on the phone once or twice. It's very much like online dating." According to Dickson, she and Comber "just really hit it off." The two drafted a basic contract, but neither can remember if they ever signed it.

In return for her part of the arrangement, Dickson was paid around $20,000 to cover her expenses. She says $15,000 to $20,000 is typical, depending on a number of factors. "You get a maternity clothing allowance, you get your gas reimbursed, and there's a C-section fee if you end up with a C-section," Dickson adds. Legal? Barely.

In 2004, the federal government enacted the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHRA), which prohibits anyone from paying, offering to pay, or advertising to pay a woman to become a surrogate mother. It also prohibits anyone from accepting payment for arranging, offering to arrange or advertising to arrange these services. The act does, however, allow for the reimbursement of expenses. Specific regulations outlining which expenses can be reimbursed, and up to what value, have yet to be determined; these are currently being developed and are expected in late 2007 or early 2008. As it stands, intended parents are essentially free to pay surrogates as much as they like, as long as these payments are couched in a myriad of expenses.

Surrogacy has long been employed by heterosexual couples struggling with infertility. But buoyed by the Civil Marriage Act of 2005 and determined to build families, gay couples and singles -- like Comber -- are increasingly turning to surrogates as well. And, unlike the cold recepton they receive in the world of adoption, they're being greeted by surrogates with open arms.

Comber, a business leadership consultant and instructor at Royal Roads University in Victoria, says he planned on adopting, but was told by the head of an agency that as a single gay male, his chances of success were virtually nil. "[The agency director] told me it is a possibility and it exists in writing in certain places in certain countries, but he has never seen it in his entire 12 or 15 years."

When it comes to inter-country adoptions, explains Sandra Scarth, president of the board of the Canadian Adoption Council, only the U.S. will place children with single-sex couples, and even then it is birth mothers who choose the parents -- the majority of whom prefer a two-parent home with a heterosexual couple. "Internationally it's very, very difficult," says Scarth of gay-parent adoptions. "Inter-country is virtually impossible." And while Scarth knows of a few successful adoptions by gay couples domestically and from the U.S., "it's harder for a single gay male than a couple." The world of surrogacy is very different.

According to Sherry Levitan, a North York-based lawyer who deals with egg donation, embryo donation and surrogacy contracts, "surrogates prefer, number one, gay couples." With heterosexual couples, she points out, surrogacy is a course of last resort following years of infertility. "It's not unusual for a woman who has gone through IVF after IVF, unsuccessfully, to have some negative feelings, whether they be anger or resentment. Sometimes they are directed toward the surrogate, as irrational as it may sound. It is very common for a woman to be angry this other woman can carry a baby and she can't."

Gay couples, on the other hand, "consider this to be just a completely optimistic, happy, wonderful situation," says Levitan. "There's 100-per-cent positive emotion which must be very attractive to a surrogate." Sally Rhoads, a Stratford, Ont.-based former gestational surrogate who manages Surrogacy in Canada Online, agrees: "I know some [surrogates] who carry for same-sex couples say, 'I feel like I have more of a role and I won't be kicked to the side after I give birth.' " Rhoads says that approximately "one in three" surrogacy arrangements she hears about now involve gay intended parents.

While Levitan is hesitant to give firm statistics, she says she's increasingly working with gay couples -- the first of whom contacted her eight years ago. In 2006, she handled her first three single gay male-intended parent surrogacies, all of whom had "no trouble" finding surrogate mothers. Levitan, who charges between $4,000 and $5,000 for her services, says she won't touch traditional surrogacy as she can't guarantee a good result for her clients. She only handles gestational surrogacies. But she admits that for a single gay man, "[traditional surrogacy] makes it a lot simpler. It simplifies the process and cuts the costs."

Levitan is fearful that pending changes to AHRA regulations could make it more difficult for surrogacy arrangements to take place if expenses are capped and limited. As it is, Rhoads says there is plenty of cross-border "shopping" going on. "There are couples using American surrogates and American couples using Canadian surrogates," she says, adding that while it's illegal in Canada to be paid to arrange surrogacies, it is legal in many states. "So a Canadian couple can pay an agency fee in the States and a Canadian surrogate can be paid top fee by an American couple," she explains. "That's how people are getting around it. The law only governs what's happening in Canada. If Canadian couples can't find Canadian surrogates, they're paying fees to American surrogates."

Down in L.A., one gestational-surrogacy agency dedicated solely to gay and lesbian intended parents, Growing Generations, says it has handled around 15 cases from Canada. The agency's professional fees are US$20,000, with overall costs for the entire process going as high as US$150,000. About 20 per cent of Growing Generations' clients, adds Gail Taylor, its president, are single parents.

In March, the Fertility Institutes, a clinic with offices in L.A. and Las Vegas and plans for a third in New York City, made headlines when it launched what it claimed was the first dedicated surrogacy program for gay men. For an average fee of US$60,000, the fertility clinics provide connections to egg donors, surrogates and lawyers. For an extra US$18,000 or so, the clinic also offers gender selection (illegal in Canada) -- which it says about 75 per cent of gay intended parents opt for. The clinic's website assures visitors that its egg donors are all college students between the ages of 18 and 27 and that its surrogates, who receive about US$30,000 for their services, are medically screened and have delivered at least one infant. When he announced the program, Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, the clinic's director, said he had already worked with 70 gay male couples, of which 60 per cent came from other countries, including Canada.

In Canada, such an agency would be illegal. One organization, Canadian Surrogacy Options (CSO), charges $5,500 for a variety of services, such as consultations with intended parents, psychological screening of surrogates, location of legal counsel, hotel bookings and even attending deliveries -- everything short of matching parents with a surrogate, which would overstep the legal boundaries. (No one from CSO agreed to speak on record.)

Comber's do-it-yourself approach to finding a surrogate paid off quickly. He and Dickson began exchanging emails in June 2005 and two months later he was on a plane to Ontario. "I can't tell you how weird it is," he says, of meeting Dickson for the first time. "You walk into a hotel in a strange city and there's a woman standing in the lobby and you go up and shake her hand, and you know this is going to be the mother of your child. You've never seen her before in your life and then within an hour of meeting this strange woman in a lobby I'm going to inseminate her. It's weird."

Rather than go the home-insemination "turkey baster" route, Comber and Dickson decided to work with a fertility clinic, to maximize their odds. "It was difficult to find a clinic that would work with us," recalls Comber. "Although surrogacy is legal, few clinics will touch it." He and Dickson eventually found SOFT (Southern Ontario Fertility Technologies) in London, Ont. -- one of the few clinics in Canada that will assist with traditional surrogacies. Once a month for six months, Comber and Dickson went through the process of artificial insemination. After three months, Dickson went on the fertility drug Clomid to boost her chances of becoming pregnant. In January 2006, it happened.

Despite carrying infants that were genetically hers, Dickson, who says she was drawn to surrogacy because she "missed being pregnant," insists she had no urge to keep them. "I was happy that they were healthy and everything, but I didn't connect with them as if they were my own children. It's hard to explain that you can have that disconnection."

Seven months after giving birth to Mac and Ella, Dickson is still in regular contact with Comber, who sends her photos and updates. The twins will refer to her as an aunt, Comber says, and will understand the unique circumstances that brought them into the world. He has one photo of Dickson leaning over the newborn twins and plans to hang it in his children's nursery. "I'm going to tell them our story and how grateful we are for what she did for us," he says.

Chatelaine Magazine
April 11th, 2007
"In Vitro We Trust"
By Andrea Curtis

The heartbreak of infertility is driving thousands of Canadian women to the costly science of assisted reproduction. This is the story of the boom in a rapidly advancing medical field, the agony of hope it offers, and the strangers willing to give the ultimate gift: a baby.

Last summer, Donders began a month-long series of blood tests and then vaginal ultrasound before the frostie was placed in her uterus. The embryo didn't implant, however, and Donders was just coming to terms with the end of that particular dream when she realized in September that she was pregnant again without any medical assistance. Although everything seemed fine, when she went to see her doctor in November, she learned she had miscarried at 16 weeks.

Dani Donders is uncommonly articulate about her wild ride on the infertility roller coaster, but the truth is, her story isn't unusual. According to the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, 15 per cent of Canadian couples ages 18 to 40 report the inability to conceive after a year of trying. For these people, what science calls "assisted reproduction" is increasingly seen as an option. More and more lesbian and gay couples and single women are also choosing to have families, and they, too, are turning to medicine for help.

In fact, by all indicators, the assisted-reproduction revolution has not just arrived, it's set down roots. The International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies estimates that in the 30 years since the first IVF baby, three million children have been born as a result of assisted reproduction. This country alone boasts 28 fertility clinics - mostly in large urban centres - and recent figures show Canadians started nearly 8,000 IVF cycles in 2004. (No one collects national statistics on common procedures such as IUI and artificial insemination, but there are thousands more using these methods, too.)

Particularly in middle-class communities, assisted reproduction now seems almost commonplace from relatively straightforward insemination with donor sperm to egg retrieval, intracytoplasmic sperm injection and IVF. And with ageing celebrities such as Joan Lunden using a surrogate to carry her twins, Brooke Shields touting the wonders of IVF, and Jodie Foster becoming a single mom by choice, it all looks easy, even glamorous.

The reality, as Donders can attest, is far murkier and more complex. Anyone entering this world is confronted by a bewildering array of options to absorb, clinics to consider and fees to cover. And the cost is not inconsiderable. Except under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which covers IVF for women with bilaterally blocked fallopian tubes, major fertility treatments are not funded by provincial health care.

And none of the technical business holds a candle to the steep emotional learning curve experienced by women who endure invasive pokes and prods, rounds of drugs and painful procedures. The shifting tide of hope and disappointment, the neuroticism, anger, grief and, sometimes, unbridled joy, is impossible to overstate.

What's more, reproductive medicine is also at the centre of ongoing ethical and legal debates pitting the demands of individuals against the moving target of the collective good. How far, for instance, should science go to make it possible for men and women to have their own genetic children? And if infertility is a medical problem, as most physicians argue, why isn't treatment covered by Canada's much-touted universal health-care system?

Throw into that messy stew the Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) Act, which was made law in March 2004 to address issues of assisted reproduction, as well as outlaw cloning, commercial surrogacy, the purchase of eggs and sperm and other activities considered "unacceptable." The legislation also established an agency responsible for licensing clinics and enforcing the act. Three years later, however, most of the regulations are still in the development phase. And the executive and board of the agency were only just appointed in December 2006 stacked, some fertility specialists claim, with social conservatives. Many patients, doctors and lawyers are perplexed; others are angry about the slow pace and ambiguities that have resulted.

The truly astonishing thing is that these obstacles seem to make little difference to the thousands of Canadian women willing to do almost anything to their bodies, minds and bank accounts in order to have a child of their own. It's something, these women say, that you can't understand unless you've lived it.

Welcome to the new family way.

Siobhan McCarthy has always been the sort of woman who makes plans for her life and sticks to them. So when the now 46-year-old social worker turned 38 and hadn't met Mr. Right, she knew what she had to do. "I wanted a family and always had it in the back of my mind that if I didn't find someone I would do it on my own," she explains. "I decided I'd go with an anonymous donor, and I started the process right away."

McCarthy's first experience with a fertility clinic was a nightmare. The doctor asked inappropriate questions about her sexual orientation, then offered up his own son as a sperm donor. After he told her she had to choose a donor on the spot, she bolted. Fortunately, the next clinic, recommended in Jane Mattes's Single Mothers by Choice, a pioneering book on the subject, treated her smoothly and professionally.

McCarthy took her decision about the donor very seriously. "You get to read all about him. Someone at the clinic wrote a profile. He just sounded like a nice person. I would have dated this guy." From there, the process was relatively simple. She went in for bloodwork every morning to determine when she would ovulate, had ultrasounds and was inseminated with sperm that was previously screened. It took McCarthy three tries to conceive, costing her $300 each time. She gave birth to a healthy daughter, Kyra, in October 1999.

Two years later, a new job, a new house and renovation behind her, McCarthy started thinking seriously about doing it all over again. When she returned to the clinic, she was relieved to find that they still had Kyra's donor on file; the sperm was frozen and available only to parents who had used the donor before and wanted their children to have genetic siblings. But the price had gone up to help cover the cost of cyropreservation, with the clinic charging McCarthy $1,000 for each insemination attempt. She was thrilled when she conceived on her first attempt. Kyra's baby sister, Niamh, was born in February 2003.

Today, with two young daughters, a job as a manager at a busy children's mental-health centre and an active neighbourhood life in Toronto's Upper Beach, McCarthy is juggling a lot of balls. She worries a bit about how her daughters will feel about their conception when they're older. "I suspect they'll be mad about it. Why shouldn't they? I got them into something they have no control over."

Kyra already asks why she doesn't have a daddy. "Early on, I would tell her everybody has a different family. That worked for a few years. Now I also say a very nice man helped us with his seed. He's a father, not a daddy.

"I worry about this stuff, but in my work if I've seen one thing, it's that having both parents doesn't guarantee anything," says McCarthy. "You can raise well-adjusted, delightful children if you give them what they need. My kids talk a lot about our family. They really believe that's what we are. It totally validates it for me. I feel blessed."

It took nearly two decades of consultation, negotiation, hair-pulling and hand-wringing to come up with Canada's 2004 law on assisted reproduction. In this emotionally and ethically fraught territory, legislative standards were clearly necessary to control the rapidly expanding industry that has grown up around the new science. Predictably, the reaction to the law was mixed, with the AHR Act hailed by some as a triumph for women and children, and condemned by others who feel it covers too much ground, combining such things as a prohibition on cloning with the more patient-centred requirement for individual counselling before each cycle of IVF.

More than three years later, with little in the way of regulations and the monitoring agency only just getting started, even some of the act's advocates have suggested it is merely a "paper dragon," and that the delays may threaten the health and safety of Canadian women. "The slow movement forward. . . contrasts starkly with the rapid, uncontrolled proliferation of reproductive technologies and their applications in an increasingly commercialized area of medicine," warned doctors Abby Lippman and Jeff Nisker in an editorial they co-authored last summer.

For its part, Health Canada says it's breaking new ground as it brings in regulations in stages. This takes time, government spokesperson Carole Saindon explains, since "comprehensive consultations are necessary.... It's a complex set of regulations based on rapidly evolving science and involves profound ethical issues."

Dr. Nisker knows these ethical issues firsthand. In 1993, the University of Western Ontario researcher, professor and physician learned that the groundbreaking work he'd been involved in on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was being used for gender selection and by a U.S. scientist experimenting with human cloning.

PGD was originally designed to test embryos for genetic and chromosomal conditions such as cystic fibrosis. Dr. Nisker was so disturbed by what he saw as an abuse of his research that he stopped doing PGD altogether and began to explore the ethics of the science, particularly its alarming potential for creating "designer" babies, selected for gender or other attributes. He began writing plays about the subject, and through his teaching at the university worked to bring the complexity of the issues to public attention.

Despite his serious concerns about the slow pace of implementation, Dr. Nisker says he believes that the AHR Act is very solid legislation that manages to take the major ethical issues off the discussion table and move them into the domain of law. The focus now, he says, should be to make assisted reproduction available to everyone, regardless of income. "IVF is extremely expensive, and you don't usually do it just one time," he explains. Indeed, a single cycle generally starts at $4,500 and goes up to nearly $6,000, and then there are clinic fees, drugs and extra treatments, pushing the total close to $10,000 for the first cycle.

"Women with lesser income risk getting lesser care, more OHSS - more complications altogether," Dr. Nisker continues. "This is not ethical reproductive medicine in the broader sense of the phrase."

He goes on to argue that since 1994, when Ontario removed IVF from its list of funded health-care services, assisted reproduction has become a prime example of Canada's two-tier system. "We're behind the eight ball and alone in the developed world in not funding assisted reproduction. In Australia you can have as many IVF cycles as you need, paid for by the state. Even American HMOs are funding it. Here, the success of the AHR Act is based on developing a culture of altruism - people donating sperm, eggs and embryos without compensation - but without public funding it's not going to work."

Beverly Hanck, executive director of the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada (IAAC), which coordinates a network of support groups, says she and her colleagues are working hard to lobby the provinces to fund IVF. "There's this 25 per cent drop in the Canadian birth rate that the government worries about," she says. "Why not do something about it? Fund fertility treatments."

Hanck also argues that multiple births - with the increased risk of complications and ensuing costs - could actually be reduced by at least 50 per cent if government support for IVF was combined with education, better monitoring of women undergoing ovarian stimulation and a reduction in the number of embryos transferred. (Some doctors do three or four at a time which can result in high-risk triplet, even quadruplet, births.) "With the kind of savings the government would see from cutting down on multiple births," Hanck says, "they could fund IVF."

Such coverage for IVF might also have an impact on a phenomenon Saskatoon-based professor of obstetrics and gynecology Roger Pierson, communications chair of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS), calls "reproductive tourism." Because of the AHR Act's prohibition on egg, sperm and embryo donors being compensated and a culture of altruism not yet established, it's currently next to impossible to find Canadian egg or embryo donors, and even sperm is at a premium.

Many infertile couples, Dr. Pierson says, end up going stateside. "People know all they have to do is go to the U.S., stay in a hotel for a few days, achieve a pregnancy and drive back. At the border they ask, Have you had any modifications done to your car? Brought back any booze? They don't say, Did you get an embryo implanted?"

Dalit Hume is tall and fit, with long curly brown hair and big sympathetic eyes. The 42-year-old professional fundraiser carries herself with the grace of the ballerina and model she was as a young woman. But her story is a difficult one, and while we're talking in a trendy Toronto café, she has to pause every once in a while to wipe away the tears that well up without warning. "When my husband, Peter, and I started trying to get pregnant, I was 33 years old, and we just assumed it would work," she explains.

After six months of trying, the couple decided to see a fertility doctor and begin the investigation process. The clinic began by monitoring Hume's blood to see if she was ovulating regularly, then moved on to three cycles of Clomid, a drug that stimulates the ovaries to produce eggs. When that didn't work on its own, she tried two medicated cycles of IUI. For this process, her husband's sperm was "washed" - in order to separate the sperm cells from the semen and offer a greater chance of success - then injected using a very thin catheter through the cervix and into her uterus.

Around the same time, Hume mentioned to her doctor that she'd been experiencing night sweats, waking up feeling as if she'd been doused with a bucket of water. Tests were ordered and Hume was soon delivered the devastating news that, at 34, she was experiencing premature ovarian failure, making her body mimic some of the symptoms of menopause.

"I'd gone in for an injection, thinking I was going to get pregnant, and found this out. I just sat there and cried for a really long time," she says. Because of the decline in her ovarian function, Hume was told that her chances of conceiving were small. She and Peter had already begun exploring adoption and now they considered, and decided against, IVF with a donor egg, since she'd also been told the quality of her own eggs was poor. The expense was enormous. And they weren't comfortable entering into what Hume calls "the lifetime of complexity" that she felt creating a child with another woman's egg could bring. They decided to keep trying - by not using birth control - until she turned 40, though they were advised not to hold out hope.

For a while, Hume and her husband immersed themselves in other activities. But something had changed between them, and one night Hume put her finger on it. "I told him, 'We're like empty-nesters only we never had the kids.' I said to him, 'Is this because you want to be with someone who can have children?'" Sitting across a narrow café table, Hume swallows the lump in her throat and dabs at her eyes. "But he told me that wasn't it. He said, 'I want to be with you. You're my family.'"

Since that emotional evening, Dalit and Peter have found reassurance in supporting one another and helping others. He decided to leave computer programming and return to school to do what he'd always wanted: be a firefighter. She throws her considerable energies into her after-hours work as a dance instructor as well as a volunteer support-group coordinator and fundraiser for IAAC. She sees it as her mission to educate about the meaning - in an emotional sense, especially - of infertility. "I think sometimes people just don't get it. There's this idea that infertility is something you can fix, something technical. But the technology doesn't always work."

In fact, CFAS's most recent stats show that only 24 per cent of IVF treatment cycles attempted in Canada result in a live birth, a figure that's on par with other countries. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that means 76 per cent of attempts did not work out - a rate that's similar to Mother Nature's own. And women over 40 have an even smaller chance of success, with a 90 per cent failure rate.

"There's this one miraculous story and everyone tells it," says Hume. "So and so down the street got pregnant after years of trying. It drives me crazy. Or they tell me to relax, or if we just adopt we'll get pregnant. Someone told me I should volunteer at the Humane Society. People can be very insensitive. But I'm not going to lie low and let it happen. I'm going to educate people."

Hume turned 40 two years ago, and she and Peter closed the book on having children of their own. "We could reconsider adoption," she says, careful to keep her voice steady, "but we feel we are contributing to the world. Sometimes my heart aches, but mostly we're good with our decision. I feel like we're making lemonade out of lemons."

It's been 24 years since Robby Reid, Canada's first "test-tube baby," was born in Vancouver on Christmas Day. IVF was so new, so unimaginable, even frightening then that when his mother went public a few months after his birth she was fired from her job and hounded by reporters. Though much has changed since 1983, questions still swirl around the relatively young science of assisted reproduction.

Probably one of the most polarizing issues remains surrogacy, which first attracted attention in the mid-1980s with the controversial case in the U.S. of Baby M, in which the surrogate (whose egg was used to create the embryo) refused to give up the infant. Today, the most common form in Canada is "gestational surrogacy," when a friend or sibling of an infertile couple, sometimes even a stranger, carries a baby created using the intended parents' egg and sperm.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sally Rhoads became a surrogate for the first time eight years ago. A striking redhead with the kind of smooth, pale skin people call alabaster, she says she always knew she'd like to try it. "I read about surrogacy in school, and after having my first son I just thought, I really want to help someone else have this."

The Stratford, Ont., mother of two started her research online and soon found a Maryland couple who'd been in a tragic car accident when the mother, Heather, was eight months pregnant with twins. She lost her babies and had to have a hysterectomy as a result but was still able to produce eggs. Rhoads chatted online with her every day, and by the following winter, Heather was ready to do an egg retrieval.

Four embryos were created with Heather's eggs and her husband's sperm, though because she was 42 and the embryos had to be frozen to await transfer to Rhoads's womb, they were given only a small likelihood of success. "For them, it was one shot or no kids," Rhoads recalls. "Heather held my hand during the transfer and cried. When I told her it worked, that I was carrying twins, I think she was totally surprised, even a bit afraid to get excited at first."

Today, the twins, Peter and Victoria, are six, and Rhoads and Heather talk nearly every week and e-mail every day. "I send them gifts on their birthday or at Christmas," Rhoads explains. "They know about Sally in Canada. Heather has told them that her tummy was broken. She's always telling them how special they are because it took so many people to bring them into the world - all these doctors and lawyers and clinics."

About 10 months after the twins' birth, Rhoads tried an embryo transfer for another American couple. It didn't work that time, and she found the experience emotionally draining, particularly taking the drug intended to manipulate her cycle so it was on track with the intended mother's. Rhoads, in fact, figured she'd stop pursuing surrogacy, but while she was breastfeeding her second child in the winter of 2004, she started thinking about it again.

Since then, Rhoads has done four other transfers for three other couples with harrowing infertility stories: One woman was born without a uterus; others had endured numerous unsuccessful IVF attempts. None of these transfers have produced a baby, and one ended in an ectopic pregnancy in which Rhoads lost one of her fallopian tubes and half her blood volume, nearly dying as a result.

"Some people say it's like an addiction. Once you've experienced being a surrogate, you want to do it again," Rhoads explains. "For me, I'm just really passionate about it."

She's translated that passion, in fact, into creating her own information, referral and support website for people interested in surrogacy. These days, when she's not working as manager at a local farm or hanging out with her family, she spends her time dispelling what she sees as misinformation about the impact of the AHR Act on surrogacy in Canada.

The confusion comes in because while it remains legal for a woman to carry a child for someone else, it is now illegal to compensate her. (Before the act, Canadian surrogates were paid an average $15,000 fee.) Intended parents may cover the "carrier's" expenses, although Health Canada regulations have yet to be tabled concerning what is an acceptable expense and how much is allowable. All of which has created an odd kind of limbo for surrogates and intended parents, and, as a result, no one is willing to talk in specifics about the amount of money paid out.

The law essentially distinguishes between what has become known as "commercial" (paid, and therefore illegal) and "altruistic" (unpaid) surrogacy. It's an attempt to balance the concerns of infertile couples who want surrogacy to be a legal option when there are few other choices with those of ethicists and others who argue that women who offer their wombs for a fee are being exploited. And, critics wonder, what do such financial transactions mean for the children of these arrangements?

But the way Rhoads sees it, the law isn't satisfying anyone, and infertile couples are suffering most because the act has made it extremely difficult to find a surrogate in Canada. Though most surrogates she knows aren't in it to make money, she says, "They end up feeling used, like a piece of meat, when they aren't properly compensated for their time and effort."

If all this sounds a bit out there (and, admittedly, only a small number of Canadians are actually willing to go the surrogacy route), it's worthwhile to remember that the assisted-reproduction methods that seemed like science fiction 25 years ago are now common cocktail-party conversation. And the speed of that social transformation looks positively glacial when compared with the current climate of rapid scientific innovation, greater social acceptance and couples demanding new and more effective ways to treat infertility. Clearly, it's a debate that's far from over. In fact, it will no doubt intensify in the next two decades, as researchers and doctors learn more about how to manipulate the human reproduction cycle, and patients and advocates ask hard questions about what it all means.

When I spoke to Sally Rhoads in February, she'd just finished her seventh IVF cycle, this time for a couple from British Columbia who'd tried and been unsuccessful in 11 previous attempts. She had four embryos transferred to her while the intended mother had one placed in her own uterus. But none of the embryos survived. Rhoads says doctors told her the quality of the eggs was likely the reason they'll try again next month with an egg donated by a Quebec woman. And if that doesn't work? Rhoads says it's probably the end of the road for her: "It's time for me to retire from trying to help."

The Stratford Beacon Herald
Wednesday, December 20th, 2000
"A Christmas miracle to be remembered"
By Laura Czekaj
Staff Reporter

Everyone's eyes were on the cart as it was pushed into the hospital room.

The two tightly-wrapped babies gurgled slightly as everyone oohhed and aahhed. The word "miracle" escaped the mother's mouth as she gazed fondly at the boy and girl twins she did not give birth to.

The twins, Victoria Elizabeth and Peter Alexander, are a "gift" from gestational surrogate mother Sally Rhoads of Stratford to Heather and Sergey, a couple from Maryland, who can't conceive.

"Surrogacy was the only chance to be parents and have a baby of our own," said Heather. She and her husband asked not to have their last name disclosed, in order to protect their privacy.

Victoria Elizabeth was born at 3:50 a.m. weighing 3.37 kilograms and Peter Alexander was born at 3:52 a.m. at 3.34 kilograms at Stratford General Hospital Saturday. They are in perfect health, said Heather. She and her husband are staying in a courtesy room at the hospital until the babies are released.

The couple, who are both twins themselves, lost all hope of having children when Heather, who was eight months pregnant with twins, was involved in a car accident. She lost the babies and her uterus was removed to prevent further hemorrhaging, leaving her unable to conceive.

"I was completely devastated," she said. "I just wanted to die."

But things got better for the couple when Heather found out her ovaries were intact and she was able to produce eggs. Hearing about surrogacy from a friend, she browsed the Internet searching for information.

Gestational surrogacy happens when the embryo of another couple is planted in the womb of a surrogate mother. Differing from regular surrogacy, which uses donated eggs from the surrogate mother and sperm from the intended father, gestational surrogacy means the woman carrying the fetus is not genetically related to it.

Mrs. Rhoads, 22, and her husband Andre, decided to embark on the controversial path of surrogacy after the birth of their son Tristan, who turns two in January. Wanting to share the joy of having a child with couples who can't conceive, they placed an advertisement on the Internet offering Mrs. Rhoads as a surrogate mother.

"That's how I found Sally," said Heather of her Internet search.

After removing the eggs, inseminating them and planting them in Mrs. Rhoads' body, all Heather and Sergey could do was wait.

When Mrs. Rhoads, 37 weeks into the pregnancy, came to the hospital for a routine check up Friday, her doctor found she was dilated by six centimetres. Both babies were facing the wrong way, heads up and legs down, and Victoria Elizabeth's umbilical cord hung down, posing a hazard to her survival. The doctor proceeded with a caesarean birth.

Concerned about the safety of Mrs. Rhoads and the children, Sergey and Heather drove 11 hours from Maryland, just missing the delivery, but arriving shortly after.

"I felt like the floor was moving," Heather said describing her initial reaction to seeing her children. "It is one of the most overwhelming feelings."

Speechless, Sergey said he stood in the hospital room in awe.

Bonding with the children is not a problem for Heather, who said "even before they were babies I was already loving them."

Letting go of the twins who inhabited her body is something Mrs. Rhoads is prepared for. Mr. Rhoads is taking two weeks off of his job at Q Lube in Stratford to help his wife cope with any emotional turmoil. Although the pregnancy was painful, unlike the birth of her son, Mrs. Rhoads said she is willing to be a surrogate mother to another couple in the future. Giving Tristan a sibling is also on the agenda, said Mr. Rhoads.

Beaming with pride, the twins' parents will remain in Canada for another week before returning with their babies to the United States. Legal matters, such as proving custody with DNA samples and changing the babies' surnames to their own, will be completed within the next two months.

Sleeping soundly, the tiny babies barely noticed the attention lavished on them, but the smiles on the faces of their parents and the happiness of the Rhoads bore witness to the miracle that had occurred.

The Stratford Beacon Herald
Thursday, August 31st, 2000
"A Gift of Children"

Stratford mom makes Maryland couple a family by carrying their twins.

By Michele Greene
Staff Reporter

For many Canadians, surrogacy is a controversial issue. Should a woman be expected to relinquish the child to which she has just given birth? Is it fair to the infant to be taken from the only mother he or she knows? Should women be paid to carry another women's child?

Some call it "baby selling." Others see it as the rich renting the wombs of the poor. But Sally and Andre Rhoads of Stratford call it a gift.

"It's nine months of my life to give two people a family," said Mrs.Rhoads.

She is a gestational surrogate mother, pregnant with twins. In other words, the bbies she is carrying are genetically the children of another couple. Embryo's created from eggs of the intended mother and fertilized by the sperm of the intended father were transfered into Mrs.Rhoads' body.

She said she is giving a couple from Maryland something that was taken away. The intended mother was eight months pregnant with twins when she was in a car accident. She lost the babies and underwent an emergency hysterectomy, losing any chances of conceiving and giving birth to any other children, said Mrs.Rhoads.

The couples hopes for a family were dashed until Mr. and Mrs. Rhoads agreed that Mrs.Rhoads would be a gestational surrogate mother for them.

"I'm so excited that these people will have a baby," said Mrs.Rhoads.

Mr.and Mrs.Rhoads themselves recently experienced the same thrill when their son Tristan was born Jan.1,1999. Mrs.Rhoads said she sees surrogacy as a way of giving that joy to another couple.

The topic of surrogacy caught her interest when she was a high school student at Northwestern Secondary School in Stratford, she said. She remembers studying a surrogacy case in one of her classes. The concept of having a child for another woman intrigued her. In fact, she told her h usband about her interest shortly after they met in North Bay, where she went to school to study mental in health in the aboriginal population. She didn't give it much more thought until Tristan, the couple's first child was born.

"After Tristan was born, I felt bad for people who couldn't have children," said Mrs.Rhoads.

In March, when he own son was just a couple months old, Mrs.Rhoads began thinking about surrogacy again. She did some research and visited several Web sites on surrogacy. Mr.Rhoads said he was taken back when she told him she wanted to be pregnant again - this time, with the embryo of another couple. After thinking about it for a couple of days and doing some research on his own, Mr.Rhoads said he agreed it was something they should do.

"I thought about Tristan. When he was first born, he was the best thing that happened to me - besides Sally. I imagined what it would be like if I didn't have him in my life," said Mr.Rhoads.

He said they wanted to be able to help another couple have the same happiness he and Sally have experiencd since Tristan made them a family.

The couple did more research on the subject together and eventually posted a classified ad on an Internet Web site on surrogacy. They received more than 200 responses from childless couples who wanted Mrs.Rhoads to carry a child for them.

In sorthing through the couples, the Rhoads applied two criteria to the applicants.

One criterion was not to work with anyone who expected Mrs.Rhoads to donate her own egg for a pregnancy, something one couple wanted her to do. The couple hoped her red hair would be a trait passed on to a baby, she said disgustedly.

Donating her own egg would make her a traditional surrogate mother. In traditional surrogacies, the intended father's sperm fertilizes an egg belonging to the surrogate mother. The intended mother has no genetic connection to the baby. Essentially, the birth mother is also the genetic mother and actually agrees to give up her custodial rights to that child.

This was the case in the landmark Baby M case in 1985, when William and Dr.Elizabeth Stern made a contract with Mary Beth Whitehead in which Mrs.Whitehead agreed to be a "surrogate mother". However, she had a change of heart and refused to give the child to the Sterns. The Sterns took legal action to gain custody of the child and deprive Mrs.Whitehead of all her parental rights, including the right to see the child. The New Jersey State Supreme Court decided that: 1) the contract was not valid; 2) the payment of money to a "surrogate mother" was child selling and therefore illegal; 3) surrogacy was potentially demeaning to women because surrogacy made people think of them as "walking wombs;" and 4) Mrs.Whitehead had parental rights to Baby M - for Melissa, the name chosen by the Sterns. The court's unanimous decision was to award custody to Mr.Stern.

It was a case that captured the attention of the public for months and brought the issue of surrogacy, and traditional surrogacies in particular, into the forefront. Mrs.Rhoads pointed out that no gestational mother has ever legally fought for custody.

The Rhoads decided that Mrs.Rhoads would be a gestational surrogate mother only. In Mrs.Rhoads case, she is carrying fetuses which genetically are not the children of her and her husband.

"These are not my children. These children don't have my blood," said Mrs.Rhoads.

The Rhoads were also reluctant to enter into this experience with anyone who was more concerned about fees. It's the exchange of money which is considered amoral by many, and brings up the perception that surrogacy is a form of baby selling. But money is a part of surrogacy. Of the 200 replies the Rhoads received from their ad, a large number asked what fee she would expect for carrying a baby. Fees normally range between $18,000 and $25,000US.

The Rhoads said they agreed to accept a $10,000 fee - nominal compared to what others were willing to pay - to help pay some of the Rhoads' living expenses while Mrs.Rhoads is unable to work. She said she felt sick to her stomach and required a lot of rest in the early part of her pregnancy, an experience quite different from her own pregnancy.

"With Tristan's pregnancy, she was fine," said Mr.Rhoads.

Mr.Rhoads who works at Q Lube in Stratford, said the fee they are receiving is enough to keep them comfortable in their modest lifestyle.

"We don't believe you should get pregnant for money," said Mrs.Rhoads.

In many ways, Mrs.Rhoads compares gestational surrogacy to an adoption through the Children's Aid Society. Besides any legal costs, there is no charge for the child. It should be the same way for babies delivered by surrogate mothers, she said.

The couple from Maryland is paying for legal costs, such as a name change for the baby which will carry the Rhoads' name when it is born. They are also covering all of Mrs.Rhoads' medical expenes. There were two trips to a New Jersey clinic for Mrs.Rhoads for tests, including a three-week stay for more tests, the transfer of the embryos to her and two days of required bedrest. At home, she also underwent injections for 12 weeks, she said.

Besides the demands on her body, the pregnancy also strained Mrs.Rhoads' relationship with her family. She said her family was quite surprised about the couple's decision to carry a child for another couple. In fact, her family is incredibly concerned about the impact on Mrs.Rhoads' health and what the long-term implications for her, she said.

"We go through a lot so these people can have a baby. It's a gift," said Mr.Rhoads.

The twins are due in December and will be born in Stratford General Hospital, said Mrs.Rhoads. So far, she added, all of the health care workers she has met have been supportive and interested in her pregnancy. As soon as she goes into labour, the intended parents will begin their journey to Stratford for the birth. They are making their first trip to Stratford in the first week of September to see an ultrasound of the twins.

Mrs.Rhoads is confident she will not have second thoughts about turning the babies over to their genetic parents. She said she is thrilled that these people will finally have a family after the trauma they have been through. They will be able to enjoy what Mr.and Mrs.Rhoads and Tristan have experienced as a family. Mrs.Rhoads said she is also glad that the intended mother is undergoing treatment so she can breastfeed the twins.

"It would give her that bonding she didn't get during the pregnancy. It would show them that she is their mom."

The Rhoads have created a Web site which includes information and links on surrogacy. Also, it includes a daily journal of Mrs.Rhoads' pregnancy.

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