A recent article in The DailyMail revealed the disturbing nature of the surrogacy industry in detailing the story of Marty and Melinda Ranger.
The Rangers hired a surrogate to give birth to their first child after they decided against the usual way of creating a family in favor of retiring early to the Caribbean.
As is typically the case with surrogacy contracts, the surrogate, who was contracted through an agency in California, was not allowed to consume drugs or alcohol during the pregnancy. But when Melinda, being the conscientious mother-to-be, saw what appeared to be a video of their rented womb drinking a shot of tequila on Instagram, the couple decided to end their contract and consequently the life of their child.
Marty told the outlet,
It was all going fine with our surrogate pregnancy until Melinda saw that Instagram.
It was a complete shock for us and when we confronted her about it, she said it was water that she was drinking but there was something about her reaction that left me unconvinced.
After much deliberation, we decided the best thing to do would be to terminate our baby at 20 weeks.
It was a very tough decision, but the trust had been broken and we were unsure what else this woman was capable of.
Apparently she was also capable of complying with murder-for-hire, as the dad went on to say,
Luckily our surrogate was communicative and respected our wishes and we just left it there. It gets very complicated with the contract and so on, so we handled the matter outside of the agency and ensured the surrogate was well compensated.
I guess anything goes if you can afford to pay well.
Despite being halfway through the pregnancy, and a few weeks short of viability, the surrogate agreed to abort the baby, for a price.
There's no indication that the parents verified the surrogate's alcohol consumption or had any indication of a negative health impact on the baby as a result.
The couple reportedly went on to have two more children via different surrogates, a boy and a girl, making the family look like the picture-perfect American family living abroad.
The "better" surrogacy agencies they used for their subsequent embryos reportedly cost almost twice as much, but that extra $100,000 gave the couple peace of mind that their baby wouldn't be born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
It was money well spent for the couple who "didn't have time" to start a family in the natural way but had plenty of money to make sure they got exactly the product they intended to purchase.
Sadly, that's the way that the fertility industry works, from "selective reduction" in typical IVF procedures to surrogacy contracts gone wrong, taking reproduction outside of its intended realm and making it a profit-driven market has devastating consequences for the innocent lives involved.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
