Olivia Maurel, who went 30 years before knowing that she was separated from her biological mother at birth, has become an international advocate fighting for the abolition of surrogacy.
In an April 21 article, children’s rights organization Them Before Us tells Maurel’s story: She was raised between the U.S. and France, and her real birth certificate was hidden from her.
“A lot of children born from surrogacy will never know,” Maurel said, according to the outlet. “They’ll just have that instinct, or they’ll be a little bit…screwed up. They’ll grow up with mental problems, they’ll grow up with problems, and that’s really sad.”
Maurel has struggled with relational, emotional, and psychological issues, including a bipolar diagnosis, that she attributes to the trauma of separation from her mother.
“I do thoroughly believe that that trauma led to having a literal mental issue,” she says. “All of my life, I thought that I wasn’t enough for people because apparently I wasn’t enough at birth for my mother to keep me, and money was more important for her than me.”
Maurel explained just how terrifying it is for the newborn infant to be separated from its mother. For nine months, it has only known her — hearing her voice, tasting what she eats, and feeling her emotions.
“The baby, the newborn, that’s going to go out into the real world after birth, has first of all to make that big jump into the real world, and it’s cold, it feels awful, and they’re asking the baby to be detached from its mother, who nourished him for the last nine months,” she said. “That is absolutely traumatizing for a newborn.”
Maurel also explained that she grew to understand why her biological mother sold her. She had four other children, had tragically lost a child, and had no stable source of income.
Maurel contrasted the trauma of surrogacy with the trauma of adoption.
“We have the same problem with being abandoned, the same issues growing up, I suppose, with being abandoned,” she said. “However, with a child that’s been abandoned and then adopted, we’re trying to give him a better life. Surrogacy … we’re just signing a contract and buying a child, and hopefully it works out.”
In the past weeks, surrogacy has garnered national attention as a country singer Shane McAnally, who bought an infant through surrogacy, posted a video of himself asking the baby if he wants “Dada” or “Pop.” When the baby babbles “mama” and starts crying, the McAnally laughs and tells him “no mama!”
https://x.com/J_K_Wood/status/2044553649196503454
Josh Wood, who works for Them Before Us, said that the baby is “the face that broke the silence on surrogacy.”
“Not papers and studies. Not a decade of advocates warning where this was headed,” he added. “Just one victim: a motherless baby crying while two men laughed.
McAnally responded by defending the video, stating that the baby is very happy and that he and his male partner “found it hilarious.”