Olivia, born through surrogacy and spokesperson for the Casablanca Declaration, appeals to politicians:
“please don’t be fooled by the adverts that surrogacy agencies post on their websites to make you believe that this is a gift, a blessing.”
Whatever the terms, whether surrogacy is paid or unpaid, “there is ALWAYS the contract in which the little human being is treated as a product to be handed over when finished. For me, that was the first thing that really hurt to know that I’d been exchanged for a cheque.”
Olivia warns of the wound of abandonment to which separation from the birth mother exposes the child: “Whether the child is biologically linked to the surrogate mother or not, believe me, it doesn’t matter. On the day when the baby is supposed to come into the world to meet its mother, it is ripped away from her and placed in the arms of complete strangers. These babies will feel an emptiness throughout their lives, the emptiness of having lost their mother, and let me tell you that unfortunately, this abyss can never be filled by personal experience.I’m actually 32 years old, and all my life I’ve tried to fill this void: with drugs, alcohol, even buying a ton of animals, naively thinking that this would close this wound so deep that I felt like I was bleeding. It took me 32 years to understand and stop trying to fill that void with the help of my psychologist and psychiatrist”.
