For many Kiwis, the surrogacy process is profoundly challenging. Sinead Corcoran Dye tells her story, and talks to the Kiwi couple advocating for a law change.
The first time I threw up I was delighted.
I went through IVF to get pregnant, and vomiting was the first sign that the months of being poked and prodded and injecting myself daily had been worth it. A touch of morning sickness was a small price to pay for knowing a baby was on the way.
The sickness got worse. I don’t know why it’s called “morning” sickness as the nausea and vomiting lasted from the moment I woke to last thing before I went to sleep. Friends were sympathetic - just hang on, they said, the first trimester can be tough but after that it gets better.
The first trimester passed, but the sickness did not. The only thing I could hold down was frozen cola and even that not every time. I couldn’t get off the sofa, let alone leave the house. I was losing weight and my skin was grey. My husband decided to count how many times I threw up in a day. One day was 24. My obstetrician was concerned but reassuringly the growing baby was doing fine, he said. Sometimes morning sickness stays around for the second trimester and I just needed to hang in there, he said.
I hung in there. The third trimester brought no relief. In fact, it got worse. The repeated vomiting caused agonising rib flare. My teeth became damaged. I was incontinent and had to wear adult nappies, and every 48 hours I had to go to hospital to go on an IV drip for the dehydration both me and the baby were suffering.
When my beautiful daughter eventually arrived, I was a shell. My obstetrician later told me it was the worst case of hyperemesis he’d ever seen. I felt physically ruined – but the mental toll was still to rear its ugly head; I was admitted to a special mum and baby ward in Starship Hospital with severe post-natal depression. My memory of it now is hazy but I do remember the staff taking away anything in my bag that I could use to harm myself or the baby.
Ten months after giving birth and it’s hard to recognise the person I was. I’m happy and healthy and have a beautiful baby girl. But with an ache to have a second biological child to complete our family, my husband and I have been seeking a surrogate.
We recently shared a post on social media explaining our story, in the hopes of finding someone to carry our next child. While we’ve had a couple of people say they might be interested we’re yet to meet anyone who - for a variety of reasons - is able to commit to the process, which of course would be both physically and emotionally tolling for them too.
And as we’d love our existing daughter and next child to be as close in age as possible for companionship, our search continues while the clock ticks.
There are many reasons people might need a surrogate. Mine is the risk to me and to any baby I might carry. Coast Breakfast host Toni Street turned to surrogacy as she suffers from a rare autoimmune disease that inflames blood vessels, which meant she couldn’t carry the baby herself. Same sex male couples need a surrogate if they are to have a baby. And globally, infertility is on the rise which is fuelling a rise in surrogacy. But the process is profoundly challenging.
A Law Commission report in 2022 concluded “a pressing need for reform”. It made a series of recommendations which - while maintaining the current ban on commercial surrogacy - would act to safeguard the rights and interests of surrogate-born children, surrogates and intended parents.
“The [current] law fails to meet the needs and reasonable expectations of New Zealanders in many respects,” the report stated.
The commercial surrogacy industry is experiencing a global boom expected to reach US$129 billion by 2032, exponentially higher than its estimated 2022 value of US$14b, according to a study last year by US-based research firm Global Market Insights.
Celebrities like Chrissy Teigen, Elizabeth Banks, Anderson Cooper and Jamie Chung have been open about their experiences with surrogacy and largely praised the process despite ethical concerns raised by some advocates who say paying a woman to have a child opens her up to exploitation by wealthier and more powerful intended parents.
Attitudes towards surrogacy are changing, but it remains a minefield of complex legal, ethical, cultural and medical issues. In New Zealand, some of those issues are more straightforward - commercial surrogacy is illegal, which removes the sting of fears of exploitation.
But it is still a tricky area, which lawmakers and politicians appear to prefer to dodge - the laws that govern surrogacy in New Zealand haven’t been updated for almost 70 years. They were passed when Sydney Holland was our Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth II was only three years into her reign and Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger.
At the start of our journey a few months ago we joined matchmaking organisation Love Makes a Family, which was founded by Mark Edwards and Christian Newman after successfully welcoming two children via egg donation and surrogates.
Newman says he always knew he wanted kids.
In 2005 he met Edwards in Wellington’s “one and only gay bar,” and a few years later they began investigating how to make their dreams of having a family a reality.
But they quickly realised it wasn’t going to be easy, or cheap. As a gay, male couple, their only options were adopting, or surrogacy. In 2018, after three years of trying to start their family and spending more than $50,000, the couple welcomed their first child, a son called Frankie, born via surrogacy.
But despite Frankie being their biological son, they then had to enter into a lengthy and expensive legal battle to adopt him.
“Bringing a child into the world should be a really joyful and exciting and fun experience,” says Newman.
“It’s exhausting and tiring enough having a newborn, so to have to go and deal with lawyers and go through an adoption process just because we’re a same-sex couple is just so unfair.”
Newman has been battling to change the system so no other couple has to face the emotional and financial toll that he and his husband did.
“The cost is prohibitive for a lot of intending parents, some people can’t even afford to go through this whole process to have a child,” he says.
Newman launched a challenge to the law and has spent five years trying to effect change. He eventually made some headway and the previous Government attempted to update the law, putting forward the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, but it was not passed before the election. It joined more than 50 bills languishing with the new National Government. Earlier this year Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told 1News that the Government was focused on delivering its 100 Day Action Plan, and “decisions on the bill would be made in due course”.
A spokesperson for Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee told the Herald the bill was now before the health select committee “and we are awaiting a report”.
“Decisions regarding the future of the bill will be made following the receipt of this report,” the spokesperson said.
Labour’s Justice spokesman Duncan Webb says the bill was originally former Labour MP Tamati Coffey’s and it still had Labour’s full support.
“The law is outdated in both how we manage surrogacy in this country and how the science has changed - there’s no doubt reform is needed.”
Webb says more certainty is needed for intending parents and potential surrogates, but that any new laws need to be right and that takes time.
“We can’t be sure what the National-led Government will do but I think we’re on the same page in that the laws need to change.”
Newman, however, doesn’t believe this Government will make change. “I feel like I’ll be slamming my head against a brick wall. It is so incredibly disheartening.”
There are essentially two types of surrogacy - traditional, where the surrogate is artificially inseminated with the intended father’s sperm; and gestational where an embryo is implanted and the surrogate has no genetic link to the child.
But both are beset by myriad barriers. There’s no single source of authoritative information in New Zealand - instead a hotch-potch of amateur support services; funding for fertility technologies hasn’t increased since 2006, which restricts the number of patients fertility specialists can take on; there are inconsistencies in who can access what funding is available; there’s no register for surrogacy so matching intended parents with potential surrogates is all but impossible; and there’s a limited number of lawyers with experience in surrogacy issues. The list goes on.
However, the biggest problem for Newman - and many others who have been through the process is adopting the new baby. It’s overseen by Oranga Tamariki through the Family Court. It takes months, costs tens of thousands of dollars and involves OT check-ins, house visits and a written report supplied to the court, before approval to adopt is given.
Newman, who went through it twice to have his second child Lulu in 2021, describes it as incredibly invasive.
“They come into your house a number of times. They ask questions that are really invasive around your financial security, around your religion, your dogs, your dogs’ breed, your parents’ relationship, any abuse, physical, sexual abuse in your family, verbal abuse, what your parents were like, what schools you went to, what your relationship with your family and your brothers and sisters are like.
“It feels like it’s an interrogation. And in essence, the thing that underpins it all is they’re trying to ascertain whether or not we would be proper and fit parents.
“And again, it’s really unfair. It’s not something that everyone else has to deal with. It’s only people that are going through this reproductive process in order to have kids. They’ve already struggled for years to have kids. It’s a costly and expensive process. And then you’ve got these people invading your home and you have to be on your best behaviour and all the rest of it in order to get a tick of approval for you to have children.”
Newman’s frustrations with the system led to him launching Love Makes a Family, which matches intended parents with women willing to be surrogates.
“There have been quite a few success stories and I am so, so happy to see it,” says Newman. “We really need more sperm donors and surrogates as there are so many people looking for help and so few angels donating / offering to be surrogates.”
Newman has a job, two children, is a volunteer firefighter as well as running Love Makes a Family. He still advocates strongly for a law change but holds little hope in the current political landscape. He instead uses his own experiences to help intended parents and their surrogates navigate the tricky legal pathways -hurdles he says should not exist when it is simply about building a happy family.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with our surrogacy journey.
We only started it a few months ago when we joined Love Makes a Family and put a call out post on Instagram hoping to find someone.
And while we had a handful of women get in touch saying they would be happy to do it for us - for one reason or another they all changed their mind. It’s a huge decision and a huge deal to sacrifice nine months of your life and put your body on the line for two strangers and no personal gain.
If we can’t find a woman willing to carry for us in the next few months, devastatingly I may have no other choice but to get pregnant again - which fills me with terror, and heartbreak for my daughter.
I can’t bear the idea of her having a mum who can’t get out of bed, who can’t chase her around the playground or lift her up anymore.
And we are just one of many families desperate for the generosity of strangers by way of donors. Not only surrogates, but eggs and sperm too.
According to Newman, there’s countless people on waiting lists at clinics for people needing sperm to make a baby, who have been waiting years for a phone call saying someone is willing to help out. I spend my days waiting by the phone too, praying for a miracle.