In Aotearoa, parents who conceive via a surrogate must formally adopt a baby who was always intended to be theirs. Now, a member’s bill looks set to change a time-consuming, expensive and exhausting process. It’s about time, writes Hannah Gibson.

At its essence, surrogacy is about people working together with others, centrally the surrogate, to fulfil their dream of having a family. For three years as a part of my anthropological research, I immersed myself in the complex world of surrogacy in Aotearoa, and found that the existing laws around adoption and surrogacy were one of the most loathed and archaic parts of the journey for new parents and surrogates alike.

Surrogacy is an option in Aotearoa for those who cannot have a baby via “natural” conception and gestation. Two types of surrogacy are legal on an altruistic basis. The first, gestational surrogacy, which involves in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and a mandatory ethics process, is where the surrogate gestates a foetus with which she has no genetic relationship. The second is traditional surrogacy, where the surrogate uses her egg and self-inseminates at home with a syringe to conceive. 

Gay couples, single cis-gendered men and trans women can have a baby via surrogacy. However, they cannot have a baby without the help of a woman or trans man willing to donate their eggs and/or gestate their foetus. Heterosexual couples also choose surrogacy when they are unable to conceive and/or gestate the foetus for a variety of reasons including infertility due to a medical condition, cancer treatment, or something unexplained.

It is after the baby is born that things become problematic under the current laws. One the baby is born, intended parents must adopt them, despite one or both usually donating their genetic material. This legal requirement is based on legislation, Status of the Children Act 1969 and the Adoption Act 1955, created before gestational surrogacy became possible. 

The surrogate and her partner/spouse are documented as the “birth parents” and must legally “give up” the baby for adoption. In turn, the person/couple the surrogate carries for must prove themselves worthy to social workers, and the judicial system, of being parents to a baby that was always intended to be theirs. 

Anna and her husband Peter were expecting a baby with the help of Ruby, their surrogate (all names and identifying details are changed to ensure anonymity). They had to undergo several interviews and home assessments to determine their suitability as parents. This process also requires the disclosure of any criminal offences. Anna and Peter had two different social workers, one who made them feel like strangers to Ruby and the impending baby, and another who was kinder. 

When their baby boy was born, he was poorly. After such a long wait, Anna stood helplessly as doctors worked on her son. Thankfully, his vitals stabilised. When Anna and her husband took the baby home, she wanted to do nothing more than cuddle with him. He was finally theirs. Before doing so, Ruby and Anna had to confirm with social workers that they still intended to go through with their plan. 

Once home, Anna and Peter had had no desire to go out into the world just yet. Like many new parents, their initial “routine” was to sleep, feed, nappy change, burp their baby, and cradle him around the house, singing songs and willing him to fall asleep. Repeat cycle. 

Anna and Peter’s lawyer filed an adoption order with the Family Court. They also paid for Ruby to have a lawyer representing her. The court date would be six months later. While they enjoyed this initial period with their son, it felt like a liminal phase. Anna trusted Ruby, but at the back of her mind, she knew that Ruby could take the baby back legally. Thus, adoption day became known as “D day”, when she could breathe freely. The same goes for Ruby, who waited eagerly because the process felt wrong to her.  

The judge reviews the social work reports and other information to process adoptions via surrogacy to decide legal parentage. This is time-consuming and expensive, and pushes everyone into a state of unnecessary limbo when the parents are cocooning with their new baby. It also creates barriers for those who may not have an extra $10,000 for the adoption process. Perhaps, they could spend this raising the baby. 

Most of my research participants see it as a necessary evil, a tick box to achieve their dream. However, our current laws make little sense because they do not represent people’s reality. The baby has loving parents already; it just so happens not to be the surrogate (or her partner). While everyone involved knows this, the law still requires people to go through the process. 

A possible solution to better meet their needs might be to transfer legal parental status from the surrogate to the intended parents after the baby is born. This provides the surrogate bodily autonomy during pregnancy and birth and has less stress involved post-birth.  

My conversations with people who have never been involved with surrogacy concur; most see the adoption process as archaic and unnecessary. However, the conversation usually gets a bit thorny in cases of traditional surrogacy when the surrogate donates her egg and gestates the baby. 

Some people see a difference between gestational and traditional, thinking that the surrogate’s genetic connection, and gestation of the foetus, changes things. It blurs the lines around parentage further in their minds. 

It makes sense that they would find it more challenging to think about. For example, when people talk about reproduction or “the family”, they imagine a heterosexual married couple who conceive a baby (via intercourse) inscribed with a fusion of the mother and father’s genetic material. Furthermore, despite diverse types of families existing, the heteronormative nuclear family continues to be privileged in law, policies and medical spaces. 

Yet, I discovered that there is no doubt in traditional surrogates’ minds who the parents are. They don’t offer to be traditional surrogates with the idea that this is their baby. Many say that even before they conceive, they have already donated the egg/s mentally. They find the laws as exhausting as gestational surrogates. 

Laws and policies responsive to the increasing dynamic versions of families should not force people to present themselves as something they are not. Of course, this would not reduce the need for ethical consideration and support for people to navigate their journeys safely. Still, it would signal that diverse families and parenting are valued as important as normative family forms. 

The Law Commission is currently seeking public consultation on its review of surrogacy in New Zealand. Submissions close on October 1. 

It’s not just the virus, it’s what comes after.

I never used to be sick.

I assumed my good health was because I’d done all the right things. I exercised, I ate well, I didn’t smoke or drink to excess. If I got sick (rarely), I’d get over it quickly. I’d made it to 29 years old without a broken bone, and had barely spent a day in hospital. I hadn’t seen a doctor in five years (except for birth control).

So when there was a measles outbreak going around my city in 2019, of course I didn’t think I’d get it. And if I did, I was confident I’d be alright. “What are the chances? I have a strong immune system, I’ll be fine.” I wasn’t fully vaccinated as a child and never bothered catching up as an adult. I figured I’d passed the worst of the risk.

When the measles virus entered my house through a flatmate – also unvaccinated – who worked at a school I was forced to isolate in my room for 14 days. I was the only other person in our house who wasn’t vaccinated, so the others could continue their lives – going to work, to the supermarket, to meet friends as normal.

Ten days went by with no symptoms. Had I escaped it? Maybe I didn’t catch it after all and I’d just wasted two weeks of my life stuck in this sunless room? 11 days, no symptoms. 12 days, no symptoms. Day 13: a headache, body aches, a fever. It had begun.

I developed a nasty phlegmy cough, but aside from that it was just like the flu. I can handle this, I thought. I’ve had the flu before. But it wasn’t done with me yet. Around day seven of the illness – almost three weeks since my exposure event in the kitchen of our shared flat – it got significantly worse.

My skin swelled with the infamous measles rash and peeled as if burnt. My hair started falling out across my body, as well as on my head. Where it didn’t fall out, it turned white at the roots. I coughed so hard that I locked a rib out of place, making it painful to breathe and excruciating to cough. The phlegm in my throat was so thick that hocking it up was the only option – trying to swallow it made me choke and vomit anyway.

I was conscious enough to raise my phone to my face, to speak to the public health nurse on the phone, and my mum. In the few waking moments I had each day I’d check my messages and scroll Facebook for a taste of normality. An old acquaintance posted something about measles being a “positive, natural process designed to rid the body of the toxins of childbirth”. What the fuck is wrong with you, I wanted to scream.

She posted daily throughout the outbreak, telling her followers about how measles is purifying, beneficial, and healthy. “We should be able to let our children catch this, to support their immune growth.” I couldn’t imagine seeing a child going through what I was going through. How could any mother wish that on her baby?

Suddenly, she stopped posting. I found out later that her son had caught measles and was in intensive care at the hospital.

Looking back on it now, I should have gone to the hospital myself as my symptoms continued to worsen and it became harder to swallow and breathe through the dense phlegm in my throat and the pain in my ribs. At night, I wondered if I’d wake up in the morning or if I’d choke in my sleep. I don’t know why I didn’t go – I think I was too scared to acknowledge that I couldn’t fight this on my own.

My poor partner spent every minute he could by my side, doing what he could to soothe me; helping me walk to the bathroom when I could barely make it on my own, watching me suffer and being unable to do much at all to help.

A month later, I was well enough to leave the house for the first time. I’d spent a month in bed though, and my muscles had severely deteriorated. Walking a block to the local park was a mission, and required an hour-long rest at each end.

But that isn’t the end of my story.

You see, measles can cause long-term damage to your body for months, and in my case years, after the virus has passed.

Measles can trigger “immune amnesia”, where the body forgets how to fight the many viruses it’s previously built defences against. It wiped my immune system back to a blank slate. I caught every bug that was going around, and was sick with something new almost every month. I struggled to regain my pre-sickness energy and rebuild my physical strength to what it was before.

But that’s still not the end of the story.

The disruption to my immune system also caused it to turn on itself, and almost exactly a year later I was diagnosed with an auto-immune condition called Graves Disease. I thought that the measles was the sickest I’d ever been, until I got Graves. My symptom list was extensive and included migraines, shortness of breath, tachycardia and palpitations, dizziness, nausea, confusion, memory loss, loss of balance and coordination, constant hunger, weight loss, double vision, muscle aches, temporary paralysis and cognitive dysfunction.

It progressed terrifyingly fast. By the time I was diagnosed I was severely thyrotoxic and incapable of working, leaving the house, or completing basic tasks. I was put on a heavy dosage of 15 pills a day, to quickly bring my thyroid back into check.

That was almost a year ago, October 2020.

I’m only taking one pill a day now, but still have to get monthly blood tests. I’ve seen a cardiologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, naturopath, osteopath, counsellor, and GP. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on my health, in a desperate attempt to reclaim what was lost. I’ve had teams of friends and loved ones watching over me, checking in on me, and making sure I’m okay. I’m fine, I tell them, I’m lucky it’s not worse. I’m grateful the doctors figured it out, and that the medication works. I was always the optimist.

But I can’t work full time without triggering a relapse. I can’t leave the house too many days in a row. I have to carefully plan my week so I don’t overdo it. My days are structured to allow for rest between each task, and an extra long lunch break to sleep if I need to. Out of the past twelve months, I’ve been in bed unable to work for five.

I’m now in the “at risk” group when it comes to Covid-19, and I hear the delta variant can be as contagious as measles. I can’t imagine what it would do to my body if I caught it, or what it’s doing to millions of others worldwide – we already know about the prevalence of long Covid, but what other long-term issues could it be creating, if we survive?

That same Facebook acquaintance is still posting, telling people that Covid is just another flu, and that we should trust our “natural” immune systems to protect us. I hope that this time it doesn’t take her son’s hospitalisation or worse for her to realise how wrong she is.

If I had known then what measles would do to me, what Graves would do to me, and that I could have potentially avoided all of it with a simple vaccination, I would have done it. But no, I didn’t see the urgency. What are the chances? I’m healthy, I’m young, it won’t be me.