A week before Sierra Martin’s 27 February due date, she received an email. It was from the couple that Martin was carrying a baby for, as a gestational surrogate. This was Martin’s first surrogacy; she was carrying a boy for a gay couple from China.
Due to the coronavirus travel ban, the email read, the couple wouldn’t be able to get into the US to collect their son. Would Martin look after him, until the restrictions were lifted?
“I waited a full day before replying, because I didn’t know what to do,” says Martin, who is 22 and works as a barista and childminder in Lake Bay, Washington. “I have nothing to look after a baby!”
After thinking about it, she agreed. Martin gave birth to baby Steven on 23 February, and took him home. She is raising him alongside her two children, aged three and five, until his parents can get into the US, sort the paperwork, and bring Steven home to China.
Spending nearly three months raising a baby she has given birth to, but who she is not biologically related to and will be giving back to his parents eventually, is emotionally wearing. “I love having the baby snuggles,” says Martin, “but it’s definitely hard knowing that he is not mine. I love him, but I know that he has to go back to his own parents eventually.”
Martin and baby Steven are caught up in a nationwide surrogacy crisis of growing proportions. Commercial surrogacy is legal in some US states, making it a hotspot for parents looking to have children through assisted reproduction. But the coronavirus travel ban has seen President Trump close the country’s borders to almost all international visitors, while a nationwide US passport office shutdown has made it impossible for parents who do manage to get into the country to obtain the necessary documentation to take their children home. As a result, babies are being born without their parents present at the birth (immigration authorities will only let parents in once the surrogate has given birth to the child). In at least one case, a mother flew from France to attend the birth of her child, only to be turned back by border control. Some parents aren’t being allowed in the country at all.
Surrogates and surrogacy agencies are scrambling to look after babies themselves. “It’s unprecedented for a surrogate to be looking after the baby,” says Rich Geisler, a Californian surrogacy lawyer. “We as an industry really try to avoid that. We want to avoid the possibility of the surrogate bonding with the child.”
Martin is adamant that she’ll be able to give Steven back to his parents when the time is right. “It will be hard to give him back, because I’ll miss him,” Martin says. “But I know he’s not mine, and that I have to give him up, which is totally OK with me.” She pauses. “But there’s definitely a bit of attachment there,” Martin says. “I care for him. When you love on a baby, you love on a baby.”
To avoid leaving children in the care of their surrogates, with the emotional challenges this can entail, some surrogacy agency workers are taking babies into their own homes. “I never anticipated something of this nature happening,” says Katie Faust, a 26-year-old surrogacy case worker from Tampa Bay. Faust is caring for a three-week-old baby girl, whose name we have withheld at her parents’ request.
When it became apparent that her parents, a heterosexual couple living in China, would be unable to collect her, Faust, her husband, and three children flew to California to collect the baby, rented a car, then drove for five days back to Florida. (As the baby doesn’t have a passport, they couldn’t take her on a commercial flight.) “We’re just kind of planning it as we go along,” says Faust. “We’re trying to figure out a way to get her reunited with her parents as soon as we can. But I’m OK looking after her, until they get here.”
