Surrogate mother gives birth to quins - and waives £8,000 fee
Wednesday April 27, 2005
The Guardian
A woman who advertised her services as a surrogate mother to earn extra cash gave birth to five boys yesterday for a childless couple, and declined to accept a fee from them.
Teresa Anderson delivered the quintuplets in five minutes by Caesarean section. All five boys - Enrique, Jorge, Gabriel, Victor and Javier - were doing well, said Craig Fischer, a spokesman for Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre in Phoenix, Arizona.
However, Javier has a rare heart defect, and will require a series of operations or a heart transplant.
They were visited in hospital by their biological mother, Luisa Gonzalez, who said in a statement: “She has given me my dream; she has given us our family.”
The biological parents and Ms Anderson opposed aborting any of the babies, even though selective reduction is often practised in multiple pregnancies.
Ms Anderson also decided against accepting payment because of the expense of raising five children awaiting Ms Gonzalez and Mr Moreno.
Ms Anderson, 25, had originally offered her services as a way of earning extra cash. Her previous pregnancies had gone smoothly, and she anticipated few problems when she agreed to carry a baby for Ms Gonzalez and her husband, Enrique Moreno, for a $15,000 (£7,900) fee. But her plans changed dramatically when doctors discovered that all five fertilised embryos from the childless couple had implanted in Ms Anderson’s uterus, and that she was carrying quintuplets.
Her obstetrician, Dr John Elliott, said her decision to carry all five children to term was extraordinary.
“Quintuplets are very, very difficult to carry,” he said, noting the pain and discomfort for the mother.
“To do that for someone else is extraordinary.”
Ms Anderson’s husband, Jerad, said of his wife a few hours after the surgery: “She’s happy. She’s smiling now. She’s relieved.” Before the procedure, she was said by doctors to have felt strong enough to walk into the delivery room - something her doctor said he’d never seen with any woman carrying quintuplets.
