Surrogacy Prevails Where Banned Via Internet
Aug. 21 -- From a hotel room in Kuwait City Shani Russell caused quite a stir, barraging news organizations, aid agencies, members of the Canadian parliament, even Canada's prime minister with frantic e-mails asking for help getting out.
The Canadian embassy bought her a ticket earlier this month, escorted her to a plane, and she is now back in Canada, after risking possible arrest by Kuwaiti authorities for submitting to a medical procedure banned in the Islamic world and many other countries around the world.
The 28-year-old game designer and hairdresser from British Columbia went to Kuwait to become a surrogate mother for a couple she met and chatted with online through a Web site that matches couples with surrogates. She had signed an agreement with a couple there, agreeing to have their embryo transferred into her uterus.
The transfer was performed July 25. Russell expected to return to Canada to carry and give birth to the child in California. They would receive the baby. She would receive a total of $10,000.
But things became complicated when she announced, citing a family tragedy, she would leave before the pregnancy was confirmed. Russell says she fled fearing she might be arrested because of the procedure, and claims the couple threatened to hold her against her will. "I was terrified."
The couple says nothing of the sort happened and says there is no proof to support her allegations.
Regardless, Russell's unusual story points to a little-noticed international market, present on the Internet, through which hundreds of couples each year defy national bans to have mostly American women carry their children, usually because for medical reasons they cannot do so themselves.
Banned by Islamic Law
Since the birth of the first "test tube baby" in 1978, embryo transfers through in vitro fertilization — where an egg is fertilized outside the body and implanted into another's uterus — have become increasingly common around the world as the technology to perform them has improved.
Scores of companies have popped up in the United States and can be found on the Internet that match potential surrogates with couples who might pay anywhere from $35,000 to more than $100,000 for the surrogacy. One common reason for the procedure is that a woman has had her uterus removed because of cancer.
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