Amazing story of Abuja surrogate mum
Incidentally, the practice comes with some conditions. According to Dinfa, the contract with this particular lady only allows for her family members to see her for one hour twice a month, and no stranger was allowed to come along. ‘’If madam is asleep, you can sneak in” from the main gate to the sitting room. […]
Incidentally, the practice comes with some conditions. According to Dinfa, the contract with this particular lady only allows for her family members to see her for one hour twice a month, and no stranger was allowed to come along.
‘’If madam is asleep, you can sneak in” from the main gate to the sitting room.
The house was extraordinarily beautiful with stylish wooden chairs at the open sun terrace by the entrance of the house.
The wealth expended to decorate the sitting room equally radiates in the body and appearance of once poor Victoria.
Victoria’s story was simple, after her secondary education three years ago she was impregnated by her boyfriend and could not abort the unwanted pregnancy “due to certain issues,” she said unfortunately the baby was a still born upon delivery.
“Since then I became a born again Christian and I got a job in a pharmacy at Wuse area. Later on I began to attend a wonderful church whom my employer introduced me to. That was where I met this couple and when I heard their story especially the humiliation madam suffered for her inability to bear a child I felt for her,” said Victoria.
According to Victoria who is 21, even the word surrogacy was not known to her when she made up her mind to help this couple let alone its implications. “My only fear then was the medical check-up I was going to undergo and how to convince my brother (guide) to talk to mum because dad is late.”
The tests were successful. Victoria was cleared of having any kind of disease. Her mother, only brother and three other sisters gave her their blessings. Everyone has agreed that Victoria has travelled with relative to abroad to work as a nanny to them. While madam to whom she is bearing a child for equally puts up the same story for her in-laws to nurse her pregnancy abroad where there is excellent medical services.
The two women are said to have never gone out of the house for the past four months since Victoria was artificially inseminated with the sperm and egg of her host family “because madam cannot go through pregnancy.” She is very excited “I am going to give birth abroad, we may leave when the pregnancy is seven months.” |The expression on the face of Victoria revealed that she does not harbour the slightest regrets for her actions.
“My sister was given 400,000 naira before the pregnancy and after three months of delivery and breastfeeding she will be given 600,000 naira, this is in addition to a six-month trip abroad,” Victoria’s brother explained, adding that for their family this is a break through. “The money given so far has been invested in their education and retail business for the family.” he concluded.
All over the world infertile couples have an option that was never available a couple of decades ago and many have suffered either divorce or from high blood pressure that led to several deaths. But thanks to high-tech science that have made it possible for people like poor Victory to rent her body to help a rich couple desperately in search of a child.
But what are the ethical and moral implications of this kind of assisted reproductive techniques? When young girls like Victoria rent their body to have a baby because large sums of money are involved and an opportunity to go abroad, it has become an “involuntary servitude and slavery” said Zara Ibrahim Musa, a banker with Jaiz in Abuja.
One account said the rich are “strip-mining the fertility of the poor.” In the United States, where this practice is no longer news, the New Jersey Supreme Court recognized the potential for the rich to exploit the poor and in a surrogacy case stated: “There are, in short, values that society deems more important than granting to wealth whatever it can buy, be it labour, love or life.”
The Supreme Court of France also stated that surrogate motherhood violates a woman’s body and that “the human body is not lent out, is not rented out, is not sold,” said the account. “We will wait to hear what our Supreme Court in Nigeria will say about Surrogacy,” Zara intoned.
In this case Nigerians are lying and hiding their contracts with surrogates not because the law forbids it but because of the stigma such a contract may create due to the strong culture of traditional parenthood. The World Health Organization (WHO) admits that the field of assisted reproductive techniques “constantly challenges social norms, moral and ethical standards and legal systems.”
However, one observer said he does not have problem with the recent South African surrogacy case where a 48-year-old South African gave birth to her own three grandchildren. Pat Anthony acted as surrogate mother for her 25-year-old daughter, whose uterus was removed three years ago. Mrs. Anthony was implanted with four of her daughter’s eggs that were fertilized in a laboratory with sperm from her son-in-law.
She gave birth to triplets; two boys and a girl were delivered by caesarean section at a Johannesburg hospital. This case, according to moralists, added fuel to the moral and legal controversy surrounding surrogacy and a religious dilemma, since the family in question are Roman Catholics, and the Vatican has condemned surrogacy.
This observer said, the 48-year-old mother did very well, “she bore her daughter for nine months, took care of her throughout her life and when she married her out she realised that her daughter is barren and she sacrifice her body for her daughter’s happiness and her own happiness as well. Her daughter has three children the mother has three grand children.”
In the past, there was only one way to have a baby, but modern technology has added variations that ignited debates that listed several new reproduction techniques: “(1) Artificial insemination of the wife (either by the husband’s seed or by a donor’s). (2) Embryo transfer. If the woman cannot produce viable eggs, another woman can be inseminated with the husband’s sperm. The fertilized egg can then be extracted from the female donor and implanted in the wife’s uterus.
(3) Invitro fertilization. The wife’s egg is extracted and fertilized in the laboratory by the husband’s sperm, then implanted in the wife. (4) Surrogate mother. If the wife is unable to go through a pregnancy, another woman can be artificially inseminated with the husband’s sperm and have the baby for them. (5) Frozen materials. Sperm, eggs, and embryos can all be frozen and stored for use in one of the ways outlined above”
Victoria claimed her pregnancy was a combination of number 3 and 4 mentioned above. But do our society and most especially religion permit such a practice? Surrogate pregnancy is not allowed in Islam because of the issues of parentage and inheritance. According to Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, former President of the Islamic Society of North America, “based on the principle that the Shari`ah came to protect and preserve the lineage or nasab of the people and thus it is haram to marry a woman during her `iddah or to have an intercourse with a woman who is carrying another person’s pregnancy, the Muslim jurists have allowed the use of invitro fertilization only between legally married couples during their marriage. Thus invitro fertilization is permissible as long as the semen and ovum are from the couple who are legally married and the fertilization takes place during their marriage, not after divorce or the death of the husband.
Dr. Siddiqi said “a divorced woman is not allowed to receive the fertilized ovum (embryo) from her ex-husband. Similarly, a widow is not allowed to take it after the death of her husband. Surrogacy, i.e., giving the embryo to another woman to carry on the pregnancy in her womb is also not permissible in Islam,” he concluded.
Popular Christian beliefs stated that gestational surrogacy too defiles the marriage bed. “True, the fertilized egg would be a union of the husband and his wife, but it is thereafter placed in the womb of another woman and, in fact, makes her pregnant. This pregnancy is not the result of sexual relations between the surrogate woman and her own husband.
Thus, her reproductive organs are now being used by someone other than her own mate. This is inconsistent with the Bible’s moral principles that a woman bears a child for her own husband. (Compare Deuteronomy 23:2.) It would not be proper for a man other than the surrogate’s own husband to make use of her reproductive organs. It is an improper use of the marriage bed. Thus, surrogate motherhood is not for Christians,” a widely read Christian publication stated.