It's not totally unrelated -- the surrogate learned about this story and believed that she was part of it which influenced she actions she took, although as far as this article represents it, she was not a part of this incident.
It’s often worse overseas. I read where an Australian couple hired a surrogate in Southeast Asia, and she gave birth to twins one of whom had down syndrome. The couple came and took the child that did not have down syndrome and left her with a baby to raise that wasn’t hers.
I used to be fairly ambivalent about surrogacy and gestational carriers...helping people build their families is a noble cause, right? I read this article (and the one about the tech millionaire lady who also had a surrogate and harassed her) and now I'm thinking the countries that outlaw surrogacy payment/for profit have the right idea.
I agree that there are major concerns and these stories keep coming out, but the problem is that the country's laws only apply within that country. Look at the case in this story--China outlaws surrogacy, so Zhou came to the US to hire a surrogate. It would probably be better if it was well-regulated within the country, as it gets incredibly messy when it's international.
Oh that's very true. It goes to a point that someone else made in this thread...those with money and means will just continue to exploit those without. The laws in your country aren't to your liking? Well just find somewhere else.
Except that outlawing for profit/for payment surrogacy doesn’t really work. I’m Australian, and our laws strictly oppose Intended Parents paying Gestational Carriers. They monitor the GP closely, e.g. if the IP gifted her flowers or a massage could be considered a breach of the law. I think it’s a bit ridiculous & OTT to ban these minor gifts for a significant life event as they still find ways around the compensation law. Lawyers & accountants are experts at skirting the laws, e.g. doing the implantation overseas or putting the money in trust into overseas bank accounts. Or, like in this story, IP’s pay GC from other countries to birth the children for pay.
I personally know multiple Dad’s who have paid women from USA to birth their children. It turned into a financial s**t-show for one family that I know. Something about the health insurance not working as expected and costing millions for international medical transport to come to our paediatric hospital for treatment, but the baby wouldn’t be covered by our public health system as legally it wasn’t Australian yet? Navigating multiple countries health systems and legal systems sounds horrible.
I'm Australian as well, it's really especially bizarre for us especially since adoption isn't an option here. I'm not interested in having children, but if you were and were unable to have your own (even with IVF), I don't know what the options would be beyond just giving up the idea of having children completely.
Don't mind at all! We, like many ex-colonies, have a horrible track record with taking indigenous children away from their families and placing them into white homes. I'm not sure about other parts of the world, in Australia we call it the Stolen Generation. This was an organised attempt at genocide, to destroy indigenous cultures and languages and in many instances it worked.
So today the government is really really iffy about removing children from their biological families permanently, and almost always aims to ultimately return the child to their biological family instead of adopting out. The default is long term foster care, not adoption. Actual adoptions per year in my state are in the double digits iirc, and usually are children being adopted by relatives like grandparents or aunts/uncles rather than an unrelated stranger.
The US and Canada had parallel systems for the indigenous population involving horrific residential schools starting in the 1880s and the Sixties Scoop. In the 1960s scoop, children were kidnapped by the and adopted out to non-minority family. And Indigenous (and Black and Latina) women were sterilized without consent until... the early1980s? It was awful-- and swept under the rug. Most American schools don't cover it in history.
That's awful. I'm thankful at least that in Australia it's very much front and centre in our history classes and never forgotten, though both are terrible.
'In 2022, he traveled to Macau to give a sperm sample that got shipped to a Cambodian lab to fertilize Russian eggs. Those embryos were flown to a clinic in California.'
I'm just reminded by the most heart-breaking long form story I read in Finnish newspaper last year. It was about a gay Finnish couple who had a boy via surrogacy in Kazakhstan. It had a lot of the same elements: The egg was from a Spanish donor and the Kazakh surrogate had the embryo transferred in Northern Cyprus. She was supposed to give birth in the Czech Republic but the agency never got her a visa so the biological father and his husband had to go to Kazakhstan and pretend that he had had a holiday romance with the Kazakh lady. In Kazakh files they are the parents so even though he was allowed to take the baby home to Finland, she could get in trouble when it's time for the boy to go to school because on paper it looks like her kid vanished.
They paid her to breastfeed which was a huge mistake because she became attached to the baby and she was absolutely devastated when they were leaving. She kept asking the Finnish journalist to describe the beautiful house, garden and loved ones waiting for the boy in Finland.
Afterwards the father and his husband took the boy home and the Kazakh surrogate (a poor single mother) got enough money to buy a house for her older children and to start a business. She was still heartbroken and felt the whole thing was wrong but was considering becoming s surrogate again for the money.
Anyway, like in this story, I got the feeling that the surrogate and the parents were doing their best but the agency was screwing all of them over left and right.
Yeah I actually thought the article made both potential parents (Zhou and Simpson) out as understandable in their own ways. The agencies involved, on the other hand, look heinous.
Yes. Thank you for sharing the triplets story. I keep looking for an update about the Mary Beth Lewis case, because it seems so sad to me that if she gets custody of the twins, they will be taken from the only parents they've known for almost 3 years, and Mary Beth wanted to rename the toddlers!
Mary Beth deceived the government, the surrogate and her family, just to get her way. She put her own desires* *above everything else — including her children’s wellbeing — which is proof that she shouldn’t get them.
I spent a good 20 minutes googling for any updates on what happened with this case! It should’ve been resolved months ago. Really hoping those poor babies got to stay forever with their foster parents and not this nutcase.
We’ve had a case in Sweden with an elderly couple who had twins via surrogacy in the US, the kids were 3 years old when they lost custody due to neglect.
We also had a case with a pediatrician who had a baby through surrogacy in Ukraine, all while he was accused of sexual abuse against 45 children (and later convicted). He finished his prison time in Spain where the baby is in the care of his mother (who thinks he’s innocent btw), he has since changed his name.
Surrogacy is illegal here but clinics who help you get a surrogat abroad is highly unregulated.
What a mess. There is a read here that is generous to both Zhou and Simpson, who are trying to do what they think is best for the kids, even if what they think is best isn't always good. The real villain here to me seems to be the surrogacy agency, which takes massive amounts of money from IPs under the guise of being an authority in the process, but doesn't actually provide navigation through a difficult system. It seems to me like the two actions that set this all off into being a catastrophe are Zhou's lawyer filing the order late and in the wrong state, and then Simpson needing to be listed as the mother on the birth certificate in order to pay for the children's medical care. What a shame for those poor kids for whom this particular period of life is so important for their emotional and social well-being. (ETA: And for the brother who died!)
I also think it's a shame that the US government is using cases like this and the appalling Mark Surrogacy case as their Trojan Horse for the issue "birth tourism." The Mark Surrogacy case is horrible and I don't think anyone, of any political persuasion, can hear about it and not feel for those children and think that something needs to be done. I absolutely think there need to be more regulations in the fertility industry than currently exist -- I follow Laura High on TikTok who is very involved in advocacy for donor-concieved people. But I also think that the current administration wants us to think this is what they're going after when they talk about birth tourism, when it's actually rare and what they'll really be using the executive order for is an excuse to go after any undocumented immigrant who gives birth in the US. I don't think, at the end of the day, they really care about regulating the powerful and wealthy fertility industry, especially considering that many of Trump's allies are using it themselves in ways that aren't entirely dissimilar.
Maddening story: a hugely vulnerable young woman who'd suffered abuse, attack and homelessness should never have been in a position where she felt she had to, or ought to, rent out her womb for an international transaction. Babies aren't a trading commodity. Dystopian stuff.
Simpson should never have been allowed to become a surrogate to begin with. She was so young, the fact that she still wanted children of her own, and considering her history with abuse and trauma, she was not mentally healthy enough to deal with surrogacy.
This was a failure across the board. So many victims here.
I was thinking about her story too... I feel like both articles essentially boil down to: when surrogacy works, it works, and when it doesn't, it becomes an absolute shit show.
Stories like these illustrate that sometimes extreme regulation for some industries is a good thing, but not outright banning them. I think surrogacy can be good if done right, and I think the first step is banning it internationally. Then putting in place better vetting systems.
I follow a woman on tiktok who was the surrogate for a Chinese couple and they just never came to get the twins she gave birth to. They made up excuses for a few years but they seem to have dropped it. They're 6 now so even if they come back for them she'll get to keep them at this point but???? Apparently this kind of thing happens more than you'd think.
I’m sympathetic to Simpson’s fears here but there’s also a big difference between “I am worried these kids will not be taken care of appropriately, so I’m trying to adopt them” and “I’m claiming I’m worried these kids will be cared for inappropriately, and also I’m deliberately leaving this guy on read except when I want another hit of money, at which point I repeatedly promise to give him what he wants if he’ll send me another $2,500 usd”. Also expecting half a million from making a lifetime movie about the experience?
Right? Like I'm not entirely sure either of them had the children's best interests in mind. It seems like she wasn't a very fit parent, but his situation also doesn't inspire much confidence either. This may actually be one of those cases for me that I think DCFS should have gotten involved. It's sad the kids are the ones who will be the most hurt at the end of the day. Those poor babies
Crazy the amount of people that immediately jump to Simpson's defence, especially on Instagram. I think in surrogacy cases it is almost always fair to give the birth mother the benefit of the doubt, considering they are literally the one putting their body on the line. But christ felony charges for cutting her partner? The boys' childcare complaining about neglect? Something is very very wrong here. I think it's clear that she should not have been allowed to be a surrogate in the first place, for the sake of the children but also for herself. She wants more children, and that's like surrogacy 101 do not become a surrogate if you want more children for yourself!
I'm struggling to understand where the over $100,000USD went for her to only have $13 left in her bank account. It's disingenuous to say "I spent it all on the children" when earlier in the article it mentions she bought a brand new SUV "with every feature she wanted".
"In front of us, Isaac and Solomon sat in their Pack 'n Plays, where they stayed for nearly all of my seven-hour visit. (Their first names have been changed.) Simpson rested her head against a couch pillow. Whenever I asked a question that was even a little bit challenging, she pretended to sleep. Then she actually fell asleep, and everyone except me napped. When the boys woke up, she turned on Cocomelon. They didn't take their eyes off it for the next four hours. Simpson handed the boys bowls of dinner and chided Isaac whenever he reached into Solomon's space."
this part of the article really felt like the journalist wanted people to read between the lines about her parenting.
Right? At minimum, if an ethical surrogacy system is possible, a birth parent should be vetted for ability to care for the kids and all the paperwork should be as locked down as possible before anyone is pregnant and signing contracts for babies. It seems that the surrogacy agency takes more than half of what goes to the birth parent? That seems exorbitant, at minimum everything should’ve been ironclad in terms of legal paperwork and advising as well as emergency backup plans for if the kids can’t go to the intended parent right after birth.
The fears regarding Zhou did seem to me somewhat grounded, with things like him promising to be there in person but then not showing up on time. I know that this was due to circumstances beyond his control, but it would raise questions for anyone in Simpson's position. She had reason to be cautious at that point.
On the other hand, there is just so much racism dripping from every corner of this story. Zhou's actions being interpreted as shady and opaque in the most malicious way possible, and Uncle Kent being openly hateful towards Simpson and Black people in general. Zhou himself didnt seem to express hatred (at least from what we can see in the article), but he did consider Simpson a good candidate for surrogacy because her race would make her more fertile (???). Meanwhile, every step of Simpson's legal defense relied heavily on defending the US against "adversarial foreign powers" or shit like that, and operated purely on Simpson's assumption that Zhou was an evil Chinese baby farmer without even trying to contact him to verify how legit his claims were. The case got really fucking far without anyone having the presence of mind to collect a single testimonial from Zhou, his relatives or the Chinese government about his background.
Like others said, biggest direct villain here is the surrogacy agency, and indirectly, it's the US and Chinese governments. China for making it nearly impossible for hopeful parents to have access to surrogacy, and the US for... all that.
2500 is not enough to cover care and expenses for three sick infants. She basically went broke keeping them which is why I doubt this was a money grab for her. Dreaming of a big payday that would solve all her financial woes is maladaptive but not necessarily malicious.
The $2500 was compensation in addition to his covering their medical expenses, clothes, diapers, etc. The article said she spent the initial money (over $100k) moving into a nicer apartment and putting a down payment on her dream car. Though she’s entitled to spend it however she wants, there is a strong case that she was withholding information and updates in an attempt to extract more money from the IP.
I think, ethically, you have to choose between saying you’re withholding children from a dangerous and unfit parent and coercing that person into paying you by lying to them about the kids. .
That’s a grift. Even if she was in a tough spot, which she was, that means she’s either endangering her kids for small hits of extorted cash (if we believe she believes Zhou is dangerous). Or it means she was relatively unthreatened by Zhou and willing to extract money from him by lying about providing him with 3 of his biological children. It does appear that zhou was attempting (poorly) to legally adopt and raise these kids from before their conception.
The contract stated he was responsible for covering any lost wages. Was she supposed to rush right back to work after a high risk pregnancy with triplets? I just don't see how that's extortion. He agreed to 2500 a month (which is criminally low IMO) and paid late every time and then tried to negotiate it down to 1000 a month. She has an older child to support. Who is gouging who?
Whole thing could have been avoided if he got the visa and parentage order on time
From other articles. The surrogate was paid ~130k and I read that this specific agency takes about half. I'm not sure if the 130k is what's left after taking half or if half is taken from 130k. The total surrogacy cost was listed at around 300k. Either way, the situation started years ago. She could have rented a nice place and gotten a luxury car when she thought things would go swimmingly-- before the twins turned into triplets or an early c-section was needed. But even if she hadn't, the money would be long gone by the time the kids were toddlers. Triplets in the NICU is a million dollar challenge in the US. She got medicaid for the kids and also cared for them-- that costs money. Another international surrogacy case involving twins resulted in a $1M bill for the paying parents. Sometimes the parents don't ever come, especially if the kids are sick. But even without the medical challenges, with triplets the initial money would be long gone and 1000 - 2500 wouldn't cover much. 1000 a month wouldn't cover decent diapers. I had to pay about 2500 a month for childcare for ONE child. It's a sad and tragic story all around. All of the adults are problematic, but some media outlets are race baiting all around. And it's working.
Calling that amount criminally low is laughable. The father of her biological children can likely barely rub two nickels together, much less afford to pay her $2500/month.
What a mess. Commodifying human bodies and lives like this will inevitably have problems. The only reason I don’t support outlawing surrogacy entirely is because I worry that doing so would send it underground and make things worse.
I think given the reproductive technology usually required it's hard to do in an unregulated fashion. Where I live it is legal, not for profit, and heavily regulated. Therefore it is very rare.
I don't like surrogacy, but at the very least should be regulated. Not only the surrogate should be checked but also the parents. Since is an international issue, there should be collaboration between nations. That is obviously day-dreaming countries do not care about children.
I’m worried about Isaac and Solomon’s development and wellbeing. They’re living though multiple ruptured attachments: to their late brother Christopher, to Simpson, their ?step-GC-Dad, to their big half-sister and now, their ‘nanny’. They don’t seem to be doing well.
The 7 hours in a pack-n-play and the lack of stimulation is not healthy for their development either.
It sounds like Ted Zhou (the IP) genuinely loves his kids, even though it reads like he hasn’t met them yet. I hope he can afford good, long term family therapy if they end up in his care. They will all need the help.
Breaks my heart reading about the babies being 'looked after' by nannies getting paid $4.5ph, that are being left to lie down for so long that their heads are changing shape. Damn.
The woman in the article, Simpson, is all over Facebook claiming that the author of this article completely misrepresented her and didn't tell the full story. After reading her comments, I am more convinced that she is mentally unwell and should not be allowed to parent these children.
I also think she's not entirely fit to raise the children-- but how many American parents are?
With that being said, the paragraph about the living conditions in Simpson's trailer and her pretending to sleep when being asked any challenging questions was.. unsettling
This genuinely sounds like the children were being kidnapped. This woman is NOT fit to care for the children — and while it’s more complex than that I’m just appalled for the poor children.
I actually don’t think it does. I think both parties handled it poorly but the villain is the agency that failed to facilitate basics. As
The article notes, there should never have been a situation where the babies went home with a parent not intended to adopt them or bring them to the adoptive parent. It sounds like Zhou was poorly informed and advised, by people who profited from international surrogacy’s complexity and did little to prevent harmful outcomes. The last names thing makes sense to me, it’s not unheard of to see people in Taiwan or China with last names or hyphenated names in order to keep a line alive. I imagine he started to panic when Simpson put herself and her husband on the birth certificate. Keep in mind, he likely has no idea what “I’m doing this so the triplets can get on my insurance, Medicaid” means, or whether it’s true in Florida or whether she’s lying to him, which she then does. She promised passports or something immediately in exchange for the last $2,500
Agreed. With something this legally complicated, the agency should be a lot more proactive. I’m also wondering if their screening process for surrogates was inadequate. Maybe Simpson wasn’t really suited to be one.
I don't get how Simpson decided that the babies are hers.
>“I birthed them,” Simpson emphasized. “I’m the only mom they’ve ever known. I sacrificed my time, my energy, my sleep, my opportunities, my money, my finances to protect them.” She and her husband were the epitome of parents; Zhou was at most a sperm donor. The way she saw it, you can’t just pay and expect to get a baby: That’s selling children. Parenting was about being there, not about contracts or genetics.
Uhhh but that's not what surrogacy is. I see where she's coming from, but she agreed to something and now is surprised that she's expected to abide by it!?
This is wild:
>When Zhou still planned to pick up the boys from the NICU, Simpson had spent hundreds of dollars on clothes and collected bassinets. She told me she and Lincoln wanted seven kids and had struggled with infertility for years; when Sasso filed to terminate Zhou’s rights, Simpson was on fertility medication.
The agency was predatory. Simpson should have never been approved as a surrogate.
She was only 24
She was not done having children of her own.
With her history with abuse, homelessness, trauma, she was in no way mentally healthy enough to deal with surrogacy.
Many agencies have surrogate candidates go through clinical interviews and have psychological evaluations to make sure they have the ability to maintain emotional boundaries. They often require the surrogate’s personal family be complete.
ACRC clearly cared more about money than the interest of any possible children, which is evident by them routinely transferring double embryos despite medical societies discouraging the practice.
However, it should be the agency’s contractual responsibility to their clients, as well as their ethical responsibility to any babies facilitated by them, to vet who they choose as surrogates.
The US should also be doing a better job of regulating these agencies to prevent stuff like this from happening.
She's definitely in the wrong but I think the surrogacy clinic is more to blame, why in the hell did they allow her to be a surrogate?! (Okay clearly the answer is money but I digress)
The bare basic criteria of being a surrogate is to not want any more children of their own. Pregnancy is inherently risky.
Maybe she didn’t realize how attached she would get to the kids. But yeah, weird of her to pull this argument when she agreed to it in the first place.
There’s already a black market that agencies work with, surrogacy and egg donor farms is a huge issue. If surrogacy is outlawed it’s going to be easier to regulate since you can’t just show up with a child
It's primarily just the US where this kind of thing is legal, and where there is a 50-50 consistent rule of law, so "intended parents" feel comfortable signing a contract with an agency and a gestational mother. We don't need to do this. Many other countries have decided that the risks of abuse are too high. Again, no one "deserves" to have a child. See: Jens Spahn, conservative MP in Germany who voted to keep paid surrogacy illegal in Germany but used it in the US himself. He *in particular* doesn't deserve a child.
This isn’t legally actionable but the more I read about surrogacy, the more I think it’s only ethical if the surrogate is someone the couple actually knows.
That would make handing over the child even more fraught emotionally. In theory, surrogacy seems like it could be done ethically but in practice, I don't see it
No one deserves to have a child. And the ethics of “renting” someone else’s body to incubate your embryo (or one you paid to have created) are just too complicated and wrong.
I’m not sure whether surrogacy should be legal, but let me steelman it (in one way):
Every day in every country on earth, women,
Sometimes lots of them, are being coerced or forced to give birth to children they don’t want to. Sometimes they get to keep the children, sometimes they have to keep the children, sometimes the kids are taken away. All of this for no money or compensation. This happens using religious pressure and the threat of shaming, this happens because of threat of force, this happens because of laws against abortion, this happens because shady adoption agencies facilitate coercing moms out of babies. It happens more in some places and less in others, but obviously it happens in both Florida and China right?
In that context, how can we ethically prohibit women from using their reproductive capacity for their own gain? As the article makes obvious, Simpson had a lot to gain from the arrangement, which is why she sought it out. I don’t think she should have been approved as a surrogate because of her mental health and other factors. But if a mentally robust woman who meets other reasonable criteria wants to pursue her self interest by having a kid for a gay couple in exchange for a life changing amount of money? I don’t want to forbid that, in a world where her neighbor is being pressured into a 5th kid by an abusive husband, despite their financial situation and her postpartum depression. That really happens,
Probably more than you think.
Again I don’t think it’s the only argument. But I think discussing the above matters
I know it's anecdata, but I know two people who have been surrogates, and I would consider both mentally sound. Some women have very easy pregnancies, genuinely enjoy being pregnant, and consider it a fair exchange.
We all live in a world where we’re obligated to pay for a whole lot of things just to stay alive. Imagine a brilliant woman who is also dirt poor. Maybe she was born poor, maybe something shitty happened in her mid twenties like a spouse’s death or disability or medical bills. Maybe she wants to get a 4 year education to make more money for her family for the next 40 years while she works. Or maybe she wants to put her kids through school. Or maybe they need a house.
You think she’d have to be mentally unwell to consider trading surrogacy for enough money to do part or all of those things? I think lots of people wouldn’t choose it and a few women would.
In a world where women are routinely forced to birth children they don’t want, I think it’s fucked to say profiting from your own body is not allowed.
The fact that the amounts of money here are genuinely life changing affects my argument. Some people will spend that on cars, like Simpson, but some will pay for a loved one’s chemo or their own tuition or something else that matters to them.
You can create a strawman/strawwoman in this case, of course I can create a story in my head that sounds like it would make sense - and that doesn't mean that it reflects the real-life situations here. Paid surrogacy is ethically corrupt and exploitation.
I really don’t think this scenario is imaginary. If you think these amounts of money aren’t life changing for the average American I think your income is clouding your judgement. You haven’t responded to my main argument once, across multiple replies. Why should women be forbidden to advance their economic status via voluntary surrogacy? Are you really going to pretend it is bad and exploitative 100% of the time? What’s your actual response?
Not the person you’re replying to, but by this logic, do you think it should be legal to buy/sell organs? Both organ donation and pregnancy have huge health implications.
People can donate kidneys, but it’s much rarer. In contrast, the average woman has multiple kids. I’m a staunch feminist. I think women should birth and raise children if and only if they want to. But I don’t fundamentally think carrying and birthing a child for someone else is immoral and I don’t think it’s always harder or worse than many jobs people do every day.
I’m not certain if surrogacy should be legal, but my current stance is women should not be prohibited from giving birth in exchange for money, given that women routinely give birth in exchange for nothing at all. I think women doing surrogacy face risks. But women having kids “traditionally” face huge risks that society loves to ignore. If we take the exact same woman, why is it legal and legit for her to have a kid and keep it literally because a condom broke, but also not legal for her to carry a kid for her infertile best friend? Or to carry a kid in exchange for life changing money?
To me, it’s paternalistic to say women can use their bodies if the church says so or if their husband says so or just because they happen to get pregnant, but that women can’t deliberately have a kid to better their own lives.
So to answer your question, I think it’s more obviously ethical to let women practice surrogacy than to let people sell kidneys. We don’t expect people to sell their kidney 2.1 times in their life. We routinely allow and expect women to birth multiple kids uncompensated.
Your logic doesn't make sense. Why does the fact that something bad can happen against someone's will (rape, unwanted pregnancy) mean that they should be allowed to do that thing for their own financial gain? Changing who benefits doesn't make a bad thing less bad. Someone might abduct and human traffic my child so I should be able to sell them? Kidneys are stolen from people unwillingly so someone should be able to sell theirs?
You seem incapable of reading my post or answering my question: why should a healthy women who has already had kids of her own be legally forbidden from helping a friend for free? Or from helping an individual or couple in exchange for money, as Simpson did?
We allow women to decide to have babies all the time for any reason or no reason at all. It’s wrong, I think, to forbid them to have a baby for money. There isn’t automatically more coercion with money than without.
I don’t think Simpson was a case of ethical surrogacy obviously, but I think plenty of women are competent to make that choice
To be clear, being paid to be a surrogate isn’t “selling a human” just like adopting a baby isn’t selling a human.
It’s truly all so vulgar. These people ordering up babies like it’s Amazon. These women seeking purpose and meaning in their lives by renting their wombs. We really need national legislation on this issue and strict enforcement.
This is the endpoint of "parental rights": children are a commodity for their legal parents. Their father, from the start, saw them as a status symbol as and a means of reconciliation for his own parents rather than full live beings. Their gestational mother was trying her best with limited means and information, was taken advantage in a system set up to prey uoon vulnerable and poor people.
Remember that the billionnaire class has gone all-in on eugenics and surrogacy to have "premade" offspring they can also use as status symbols. These people see children as things.
And I think it’s very ungenerous to say Zhou only wanted those children as a status symbol. Do I think wanting children to bring your parents back together is a good idea? No. But that didn’t seem to be his only motive. The article mentioned how he grew up an only child and how alone he felt. He seemed to want the family he didn’t get to have. Is that selfish? Yeah. But I think most people have children for similarly selfish reasons.
You could say Simpson was also commodifying those children. I do not doubt she cared about them and was concerned about their well-being. However, she also talks about how the children would be the answer to her money problems, and how she believed she could make $500k/year for life by selling their story to Lifetime. And let’s not ignore the fact that she tried to become a surrogate again while all of this was happening, it just “didn’t work out”. Or that she was on fertility medication trying to have more children with her husband. Wanting seven children while you can barely afford the ones you have could also be considered selfish.
Both Simpson and Zhou were taken advantage of here. Zhou was taken advantage of by Uncle Kent and ACRC, who played off of his desperation to be a father. Simpson was taken advantage of by ACRC as well as people like Rick Scott who are using her story to further their anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ agenda.
Wait, you're siding with the birth mother who immediately spent all the money given to her on a new place to live and an SUV with all the bells and whistles and promptly ran out of money. Ran out of over $100k no less. Over the guy who makes $22k and just wants a family? And spent all his money until he had nothing left and went into debt just to give it to a woman who was supposed to be taking care of kids and instead used it as rent instead of keeping her job?
The article sorta insinuates that she might have wanted to keep the babies from the start by mentioning her fertility struggles. She could have seen surrogacy as a way to pay for fertility treatments and get money from the IP. I don't think she's this perfect victim/savior that people are trying to paint her as in some of these comments.
I think in surrogacy cases like this I usually feel more sympathy for the birth mother than anybody else, but in this case she is so clearly in the wrong. She's a grifter. I don't think I believe that she went into this with bad intentions, but her actions following are insane. Purposefully ignoring him then getting a lawyer to try and block him from being the parent by claiming he had ghosted her??
Yeah, if you read all the way to the end, the surrogate turns out to be really trashy. She's sympathetic at first, but the more you read about her, the worse she gets.
After reading so much about surrogacy, I bluntly and unashamedly do not agree with it at all unless it's an altruistic situation between sisters without a profit gain. It is absolutely never what is best for the child, which should always be the main consideration in anything dealing with children. And there's undeniably a dystopia class aspect too, as poor women sell their bodies to rich entitled people. Poor sweet innocent babies! Every baby deserves to be born into a loving warm home and to be carried by a mother who loves them.
I’m not sure if it should be legal. But it’s easy for me to imagine people who can give a child “what is best for them” as well as anyone. Gay male couples and couples who struggle with infertility and couples for whom one or both are older or unable to carry a child. People whose health requires medications that prohibit pregnancy.
None of those groups of people are incapable of giving a child a wonderful home or upbringing. Having the equipment to produce a child, as many straight couples do, doesn’t award people the skills or means to raise them
No one "deserves" a child. Full stop. That is not a judgement on gay couples' ability to be excellent parents or create a loving and safe home for a child, but it doesn't give them, or ANYONE the inherent right that should be protected by law to create a child via surrogacy. Not the Kardashians, not a gay couple, not a single parent, no one.
I’m literally saying that “deserves” is irrelevant to the question of children. No one gets children because they deserve them. Most people get kids by having sex themselves. Some people get kids by having a friend get pregnant (free surrogacy). Some people get kids when a relative dies. None of these people get kids because they are deserving. I’m not sure why it’s more right for a straight couple to accidentally have a baby because the condom breaks than for a gay couple to ask or pay someone to have one on purpose, after years of deliberation and saving money.
Whether someone is capable of giving a baby a good home or not is irrelevant to the question, in my opinion. There are already so many babies in this world in need of loving homes and, I'm going to be honest, I think the actual pregnancy is important to the baby's growth. A pregnant mother has all sorts of hormones and emotions and is connected to the baby (or should be, in a healthy pregnancy). I don't think anyone should be paying someone else to carry a child that the the surrogate is not going to love. That is not what's best for the child. Regardless of the type of loving home the buyer can then provide. If it was really about loving and caring for a child, then these people would not be so set on the genetic aspect of it and would adopt.
And yeah, no one deserves a child. I absolutely support gay or infertile couples adopting.
My understanding is that it’s kind of a myth that there are lots of babies up for adoption. Just because a gay or infertile couple wants to adopt an infant, doesn’t mean there’s one available.
This is a little slippery to me, as someone else who had a baby through IVF. I don't feel like it's my place to say commercial surrogacy is wrong, when it's a very related industry that allowed me to become a parent. And I was lucky that it worked for me. For those who have tried everything else, I don't judge them for turning to surrogacy because I know what it's like to want a good outcome so badly.
I guess one hard question is, if you hadn’t been able to have your kids via IVF, would you have wanted to have one via surrogacy, if that was the only way and you could afford it? I have no idea, not having been in that situation.
Great question, I would def consider surrogacy but will have to manage my own with lawyers and paying with my own money because we do not have surrogacy agencies in our country
I didn’t love that at some points the author seemed to be trying to “both sides” things with little asides about Simpson. I don’t care that she stuck the kids on Cocomelon for four hours, I don’t care about the SUV she bought, the actual legal quagmire and its implications are engaging enough.
The author was probably trying to imply that Simpson’s motives were hardly pure, and I can see how Simpson’s fears of trafficking were likely genuine and not unfounded. But stick to that, their TV habits and how long they stay in the pack and play are immaterial.
I don’t know, I think DCF being called on Simpson for the boys welfare, even outside of the Zhou parenthood drama, is a detail worth mentioning.
Similarly, the daycare workers concerns about her following the boy’s medication routines and her plan to create a documentary about the story and make “at least half a million” are also interesting.
I am extremely sceptical of the surrogacy industry, and wealthy foreign IPs, but I still think it worth remembering that individual cases have nuance. It also sets up Zhou’s motives & sense of urgency
Ultimately the real victims of these situations are often the children
All 3 triplets sleeping in a single pack n play. Being left in the pack n play for 7 hours. One dying because he was so unwell with breathing issues. I'm sorry this is just negligence and I'm shocked she was able to keep them for as long as she did.
completely agreed. most of the article she is painted as a savior acting out of the good of her heart but like - who leaves their kids in a pack and play for 7 hours, let alone two babies in one? other mandated reporters think they aren't getting proper medication? There are some real caregiving red flags here.
I'd love to hear other people's opinions, I thought the line "instead of ID photos, she sent pictures of the babies sharing a crib lined with pillows and blankets" was insinuating that the baby who later died passed away due to SIDs.
I interpreted the line as a warning that she is negligent, because I thought it was common knowledge nowadays that a 'fluffy' cot filled with soft items leads to a very very dangerous risk of suffocation. On the other hand, I can also see the authorial intent to be that she's a caring parent by lining their bed with cosy soft items. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I picked up on that too and thought it was foreshadowing. My daughter slept in a pack n play and they're not that big, definitely not big enough for 3 babies/toddlers to sleep in and the thought of them being left in there for 7 hours breaks my heart.
Also—I found it odd that she was asking for pay for lost wages since she couldn’t work, but the boys were also in daycare? Perhaps I missed a line about her going back to work at some point.
You're also coincidentally leaving out the park where the mom pretended to fall asleep every time a hard question was asked for her. And then did actually fall asleep. While a stranger was in the room alone with her kids. I think that's all relevant.
Especially the fact that at one point she had basically quit her job and was living on Zhou's salary. . . .
Yes!! One would think that if you were so pressed to adopt these kids, as you are their rightful parent, you’d be doing everything to get your story out there. A long form article on the situation is gold in the court of public opinion. I’d be taking it SO seriously. At the very least, I wouldn’t be laying down!!
No it's not, both are neglectful, so is the reports from the daycare, and the death of the one triplet and near death of the second should also raise concerns. She doesn't seem like a stable person.
I wish the article really had gone in on the biological dad - I think the author acknowledges that there is a sticky needle to thread there, and while everyone agrees that China's demographics are precarious... like, where does that leave him too? The how and why this one guy ends up in a position with three babies is worth at least three articles.
Right and he's very poor and makes 22k/yr but also has like $200k for this surrogacy journey and is totally ready to care for three infants into adulthood.
He very clearly does not have $200k, the article constantly mentions that he's taking out loans, maxing out credit cards and asking his dad for money. Also worth mentioning that he didn't go into this journey expecting to have to spend that much, things kept going wrong and unfortunately this is an industry where scams are common and huge.
Definitely don't think he's ready to care for three infants into adulthood, but then again neither is Simpson. She's relying on his money, and even when he sent her over six figures she somehow ends up with only $13 in her bank account. Someone is getting super rich off of this and it's neither of them!
Due to much lower cost of living, $22k per year is a solidly middle class salary in China -- you can live and save comfortably on that, especially in less expensive cities. And Chinese people generally are much more frugal and can often save a lot more money than Americans do. The culture is that people often live with their parents for much of their adult lives, so many people can save almost their their entire salaries that way, and there's generally more of a frugal/penny pinching culture where you don't buy anything you don't absolutely need. Plus economic and real estate booms in recent decades have increased a lot of ordinary people's wealth through dramatically rising property prices. (I have a friend whose parents bought two apartments in Shanghai thirty years ago for around $30k, they recently sold both for around $4 million).
So in China, it's not uncommon for people who make modest salaries to have very substantial savings that they've built up over their entire lives. The article says that this guy spent his entire life savings on these babies, and even sold a property to fund them.
source: I'm an American who has spent the last decade living and working in China, and I personally observe all these cultural differences
I also think it’s interesting that the author essentially “buys” the story of the IP without obviously being able to see him in person the way that she observed Kyla. I’m not saying Kyla is a perfect legal parent (although that will matter for an adoption petition), but I think the skepticism around Zhou is fairly warranted. How did this supposedly middle class guy who is broke get all this money? It would be easy to fake a few Zoom calls and doctored documents are all over this story.
Fundamentally, are we really supposed to hand an infant American citizen halfway across the world over to a person who really isn’t well verified through a third party?
Eh, her skepticism only evolved after she signed a contract with him and spent nine months happily prepping to give him babies. He was the parent they both agreed upon from prior to conception, they exchanged $100,000+ for that outcome, and she immediately puts herself on the birth certificates and extorts cash from him in exchange for promising to change it? That’s not fear of kidnapping.
I’m not saying he should’ve been okayed for this adoption scenario. But I don’t think her behavior was a reasonable response to genuine fears of kidnapping
It's not some mysterious ghoul, it's just someone in another country. Chinese people are just as real as you are, and can certainly be verified -- they don't deserve undue suspicions just because they are Chinese? Zhou is the biological and legal parent, and I'm sure he offered proof of his identity to the lawyers and courts that are currently handling his case, as well as to the journalist who seems to have looked deeply into his background.
And middle class Chinese people generally are much more frugal and can often save a lot more money than Americans do. The culture is that people often live with their parents for much of their adult lives, so many people can save almost their their entire salaries that way, and there's generally more of a frugal/penny pinching culture where you don't buy anything you don't absolutely need. Plus economic and real estate booms in recent decades have increased a lot of ordinary people's wealth through dramatically rising property prices. (I have a friend whose parents bought two apartments in Shanghai thirty years ago for around $30k, they recently sold both for around $4 million).
So in China, it's not uncommon for people who make modest salaries to have very substantial savings that they've built up over their entire lives. The article says that this guy spent his entire life savings on these babies, and even sold a property to fund them.
source: I'm an American who has spent the last decade living and working in China, and I personally observe all these cultural differences
Personally, I don't care about the adults. To me, this isn't a left or right wing issue, a gender issue, or even a contract issue. I care about the children, and what is best for them, now and throughout their lifespan. Children are not products. They are not goods and services. They are not entertainers or money-makers for their families (talking about you, parents who exploit their children online) - nor should they be. They are human beings. They have separate, distinct, individual, unique needs and development, as a population group. They are not people's accessories, play things, or extensions of a parent. Surrogacy should be about the children - and it isn't, not contractually or legally - even when surrogacy goes well, happy, and "right."
I can’t even read 3 paragraphs. This woman’s “spidey senses” should’ve gone off WAY EARLIER. Just what the actual heck was she thinking from moment one?
This is like those people (Chinese unmarried uninvolved male and female) in Arcadia who hired a bunch of surrogates and had a bunch of babies for WHO KNOWS WHAT PURPOSE.
Read more bc she’s insane and those babies need to go to their Dad so fast it’s not even funny. Then look her up and see how she’s behaving all over facebook…she’s unwell
hisosih | a day ago
Wow, I thought this was The Babies Kept in a Mysterious Los Angeles Mansion, horrifying that it's another unrelated story (I'm guessing from the few paragraphs I've read)
thesphinxistheriddle | a day ago
It's not totally unrelated -- the surrogate learned about this story and believed that she was part of it which influenced she actions she took, although as far as this article represents it, she was not a part of this incident.
PartyPorpoise | a day ago
There are a lot of ways that surrogacy can get messy. Especially when it’s done internationally.
horseradishstalker | 23 hours ago
It’s often worse overseas. I read where an Australian couple hired a surrogate in Southeast Asia, and she gave birth to twins one of whom had down syndrome. The couple came and took the child that did not have down syndrome and left her with a baby to raise that wasn’t hers.
totallycalledla-a | 22 hours ago
The husband of that couple is a convicted sex offender too. Lovely people 🙄🤢. Those poor babies.
Thankfully foreigners hiring Thai surrogates was banned following that case so at least some good came of it.
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
He died in 2020. Can’t say I feel bad.
Brilliant_Salt3415 | 17 hours ago
As an Australian this story was horrific.
Thankfully a large amount was raised to support baby Ganmy and his mum (the surrogate) back in Thailand.
He can be educated, live in good housing and hopefully have a better life than being dumped in a hospital by these terrible people.
The "parents" were older and dodgy as.
Wide-Pop6050 | 16 hours ago
Yeah but she still has to care for a child she didn’t plan on having or want. It’s still so bad. Poor mom, poor kid
totallycalledla-a | 21 hours ago
🥳
MayISeeYourDogPls | 18 hours ago
Hope it hurt.
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
Yeah the article briefly mentions that case. It was a big story, I remember it. Thailand banned overseas surrogacy because of it.
arianrhodd | 14 hours ago
That case is mentioned in the article.
hahasadface | 12 hours ago
That's in the article.
horseradishstalker | 2 hours ago
It should be.
GingerBrrd | a day ago
I have thought about that LA article ever since I read it, and wondered how many more cases of this there might be…
SquidTheRidiculous | 23 hours ago
Billionaires gotta get the babies they eat somewhere.
recycledpaper | 23 hours ago
I used to be fairly ambivalent about surrogacy and gestational carriers...helping people build their families is a noble cause, right? I read this article (and the one about the tech millionaire lady who also had a surrogate and harassed her) and now I'm thinking the countries that outlaw surrogacy payment/for profit have the right idea.
ah3019 | 23 hours ago
I agree that there are major concerns and these stories keep coming out, but the problem is that the country's laws only apply within that country. Look at the case in this story--China outlaws surrogacy, so Zhou came to the US to hire a surrogate. It would probably be better if it was well-regulated within the country, as it gets incredibly messy when it's international.
recycledpaper | 21 hours ago
Oh that's very true. It goes to a point that someone else made in this thread...those with money and means will just continue to exploit those without. The laws in your country aren't to your liking? Well just find somewhere else.
arianrhodd | 14 hours ago
Especially when the biological parent can't leave their country to come get the children.
standish_ | 19 hours ago
> the problem is that the country's laws only apply within that country
This is not true for every country. The USA can and does prosecute citizens who violate USA law while overseas.
Complex_Exhibition | 17 hours ago
Except that outlawing for profit/for payment surrogacy doesn’t really work. I’m Australian, and our laws strictly oppose Intended Parents paying Gestational Carriers. They monitor the GP closely, e.g. if the IP gifted her flowers or a massage could be considered a breach of the law. I think it’s a bit ridiculous & OTT to ban these minor gifts for a significant life event as they still find ways around the compensation law. Lawyers & accountants are experts at skirting the laws, e.g. doing the implantation overseas or putting the money in trust into overseas bank accounts. Or, like in this story, IP’s pay GC from other countries to birth the children for pay.
I personally know multiple Dad’s who have paid women from USA to birth their children. It turned into a financial s**t-show for one family that I know. Something about the health insurance not working as expected and costing millions for international medical transport to come to our paediatric hospital for treatment, but the baby wouldn’t be covered by our public health system as legally it wasn’t Australian yet? Navigating multiple countries health systems and legal systems sounds horrible.
Surrogacy is such an icky business.
Individual_Fun9418 | 16 hours ago
I'm Australian as well, it's really especially bizarre for us especially since adoption isn't an option here. I'm not interested in having children, but if you were and were unable to have your own (even with IVF), I don't know what the options would be beyond just giving up the idea of having children completely.
WannieWirny | 14 hours ago
Why isn’t adoption available if you don’t mind me asking?
Individual_Fun9418 | 14 hours ago
Don't mind at all! We, like many ex-colonies, have a horrible track record with taking indigenous children away from their families and placing them into white homes. I'm not sure about other parts of the world, in Australia we call it the Stolen Generation. This was an organised attempt at genocide, to destroy indigenous cultures and languages and in many instances it worked.
So today the government is really really iffy about removing children from their biological families permanently, and almost always aims to ultimately return the child to their biological family instead of adopting out. The default is long term foster care, not adoption. Actual adoptions per year in my state are in the double digits iirc, and usually are children being adopted by relatives like grandparents or aunts/uncles rather than an unrelated stranger.
No-Package-3808 | 13 hours ago
The US and Canada had parallel systems for the indigenous population involving horrific residential schools starting in the 1880s and the Sixties Scoop. In the 1960s scoop, children were kidnapped by the and adopted out to non-minority family. And Indigenous (and Black and Latina) women were sterilized without consent until... the early1980s? It was awful-- and swept under the rug. Most American schools don't cover it in history.
milkXtea | 4 hours ago
That's awful. I'm thankful at least that in Australia it's very much front and centre in our history classes and never forgotten, though both are terrible.
recycledpaper | 16 hours ago
I hear you, definitely shows how easy it is to manipulate things in that industry. It's a business through and through.
demondaddii | 23 hours ago
do you have a version with out the paywall? this sounds insane and i’m not sure how to access it. thanks!
hisosih | 22 hours ago
Sure! here's a link to the article thread that was posted here which I found to have interesting discussion, it has the archive link in the thread
demondaddii | 22 hours ago
thanks so so much!!
PutTheDamnDogDown | a day ago
'In 2022, he traveled to Macau to give a sperm sample that got shipped to a Cambodian lab to fertilize Russian eggs. Those embryos were flown to a clinic in California.'
Yay globalised capitalism, I guess? Poor babies.
DeeperEnd84 | 23 hours ago
I'm just reminded by the most heart-breaking long form story I read in Finnish newspaper last year. It was about a gay Finnish couple who had a boy via surrogacy in Kazakhstan. It had a lot of the same elements: The egg was from a Spanish donor and the Kazakh surrogate had the embryo transferred in Northern Cyprus. She was supposed to give birth in the Czech Republic but the agency never got her a visa so the biological father and his husband had to go to Kazakhstan and pretend that he had had a holiday romance with the Kazakh lady. In Kazakh files they are the parents so even though he was allowed to take the baby home to Finland, she could get in trouble when it's time for the boy to go to school because on paper it looks like her kid vanished.
They paid her to breastfeed which was a huge mistake because she became attached to the baby and she was absolutely devastated when they were leaving. She kept asking the Finnish journalist to describe the beautiful house, garden and loved ones waiting for the boy in Finland.
Afterwards the father and his husband took the boy home and the Kazakh surrogate (a poor single mother) got enough money to buy a house for her older children and to start a business. She was still heartbroken and felt the whole thing was wrong but was considering becoming s surrogate again for the money.
Anyway, like in this story, I got the feeling that the surrogate and the parents were doing their best but the agency was screwing all of them over left and right.
llamiaceae | 23 hours ago
Yeah I actually thought the article made both potential parents (Zhou and Simpson) out as understandable in their own ways. The agencies involved, on the other hand, look heinous.
[OP] DistributionFit3958 | 23 hours ago
let's not forget this terrifying story as welllll on the surrogacy nightmare.... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/magazine/marybeth-lewis-13-children-felony-charges.html
watersnakebro | 23 hours ago
Yes. Thank you for sharing the triplets story. I keep looking for an update about the Mary Beth Lewis case, because it seems so sad to me that if she gets custody of the twins, they will be taken from the only parents they've known for almost 3 years, and Mary Beth wanted to rename the toddlers!
classyrock | 18 hours ago
Mary Beth deceived the government, the surrogate and her family, just to get her way. She put her own desires* *above everything else — including her children’s wellbeing — which is proof that she shouldn’t get them.
weisp | 23 hours ago
That article haunted me too... that Marybeth woman is nuts
limedifficult | 20 hours ago
I spent a good 20 minutes googling for any updates on what happened with this case! It should’ve been resolved months ago. Really hoping those poor babies got to stay forever with their foster parents and not this nutcase.
ignoranceisbourgeois | 20 hours ago
We’ve had a case in Sweden with an elderly couple who had twins via surrogacy in the US, the kids were 3 years old when they lost custody due to neglect.
We also had a case with a pediatrician who had a baby through surrogacy in Ukraine, all while he was accused of sexual abuse against 45 children (and later convicted). He finished his prison time in Spain where the baby is in the care of his mother (who thinks he’s innocent btw), he has since changed his name.
Surrogacy is illegal here but clinics who help you get a surrogat abroad is highly unregulated.
watersnakebro | 22 hours ago
Thank you for recounting this case.
thesphinxistheriddle | a day ago
What a mess. There is a read here that is generous to both Zhou and Simpson, who are trying to do what they think is best for the kids, even if what they think is best isn't always good. The real villain here to me seems to be the surrogacy agency, which takes massive amounts of money from IPs under the guise of being an authority in the process, but doesn't actually provide navigation through a difficult system. It seems to me like the two actions that set this all off into being a catastrophe are Zhou's lawyer filing the order late and in the wrong state, and then Simpson needing to be listed as the mother on the birth certificate in order to pay for the children's medical care. What a shame for those poor kids for whom this particular period of life is so important for their emotional and social well-being. (ETA: And for the brother who died!)
I also think it's a shame that the US government is using cases like this and the appalling Mark Surrogacy case as their Trojan Horse for the issue "birth tourism." The Mark Surrogacy case is horrible and I don't think anyone, of any political persuasion, can hear about it and not feel for those children and think that something needs to be done. I absolutely think there need to be more regulations in the fertility industry than currently exist -- I follow Laura High on TikTok who is very involved in advocacy for donor-concieved people. But I also think that the current administration wants us to think this is what they're going after when they talk about birth tourism, when it's actually rare and what they'll really be using the executive order for is an excuse to go after any undocumented immigrant who gives birth in the US. I don't think, at the end of the day, they really care about regulating the powerful and wealthy fertility industry, especially considering that many of Trump's allies are using it themselves in ways that aren't entirely dissimilar.
Brief_Direction_5647 | a day ago
Paywall-free
DeadWishUpon | a day ago
Thank you!
ElderberryNo5595 | 20 hours ago
Wow, what a read. Thanks for posting that link.
Yesiamanaltruist | 20 hours ago
Bless you!
PutTheDamnDogDown | a day ago
Maddening story: a hugely vulnerable young woman who'd suffered abuse, attack and homelessness should never have been in a position where she felt she had to, or ought to, rent out her womb for an international transaction. Babies aren't a trading commodity. Dystopian stuff.
PrincessConsuela52 | a day ago
Simpson should never have been allowed to become a surrogate to begin with. She was so young, the fact that she still wanted children of her own, and considering her history with abuse and trauma, she was not mentally healthy enough to deal with surrogacy.
This was a failure across the board. So many victims here.
arianrhodd | 14 hours ago
Surrogates in situations like this should be screened for mental and physical health issues.
TheDiceBlesser | a day ago
Warning: there's a dead baby in this article!
What a freaking mess. I feel truly awful for those kids, and it really doesn't seem like there's any good resolution to be had.
Dramatic-Paradise | a day ago
Awful all the way around
historyhill | a day ago
The industry honestly should be upended, between this and Cindy Bi's insanity.
sillytinygirl | 23 hours ago
I was thinking about her story too... I feel like both articles essentially boil down to: when surrogacy works, it works, and when it doesn't, it becomes an absolute shit show.
TreenBean85 | 22 hours ago
Stories like these illustrate that sometimes extreme regulation for some industries is a good thing, but not outright banning them. I think surrogacy can be good if done right, and I think the first step is banning it internationally. Then putting in place better vetting systems.
totallycalledla-a | 23 hours ago
I follow a woman on tiktok who was the surrogate for a Chinese couple and they just never came to get the twins she gave birth to. They made up excuses for a few years but they seem to have dropped it. They're 6 now so even if they come back for them she'll get to keep them at this point but???? Apparently this kind of thing happens more than you'd think.
Shortymac09 | 4 hours ago
Oh that lady who had them during the pandemic?
llamiaceae | 23 hours ago
I’m sympathetic to Simpson’s fears here but there’s also a big difference between “I am worried these kids will not be taken care of appropriately, so I’m trying to adopt them” and “I’m claiming I’m worried these kids will be cared for inappropriately, and also I’m deliberately leaving this guy on read except when I want another hit of money, at which point I repeatedly promise to give him what he wants if he’ll send me another $2,500 usd”. Also expecting half a million from making a lifetime movie about the experience?
harm-redux | 22 hours ago
Right? Like I'm not entirely sure either of them had the children's best interests in mind. It seems like she wasn't a very fit parent, but his situation also doesn't inspire much confidence either. This may actually be one of those cases for me that I think DCFS should have gotten involved. It's sad the kids are the ones who will be the most hurt at the end of the day. Those poor babies
Individual_Fun9418 | 17 hours ago
Crazy the amount of people that immediately jump to Simpson's defence, especially on Instagram. I think in surrogacy cases it is almost always fair to give the birth mother the benefit of the doubt, considering they are literally the one putting their body on the line. But christ felony charges for cutting her partner? The boys' childcare complaining about neglect? Something is very very wrong here. I think it's clear that she should not have been allowed to be a surrogate in the first place, for the sake of the children but also for herself. She wants more children, and that's like surrogacy 101 do not become a surrogate if you want more children for yourself!
I'm struggling to understand where the over $100,000USD went for her to only have $13 left in her bank account. It's disingenuous to say "I spent it all on the children" when earlier in the article it mentions she bought a brand new SUV "with every feature she wanted".
reggie_veggie | 13 hours ago
"In front of us, Isaac and Solomon sat in their Pack 'n Plays, where they stayed for nearly all of my seven-hour visit. (Their first names have been changed.) Simpson rested her head against a couch pillow. Whenever I asked a question that was even a little bit challenging, she pretended to sleep. Then she actually fell asleep, and everyone except me napped. When the boys woke up, she turned on Cocomelon. They didn't take their eyes off it for the next four hours. Simpson handed the boys bowls of dinner and chided Isaac whenever he reached into Solomon's space."
this part of the article really felt like the journalist wanted people to read between the lines about her parenting.
Shortymac09 | 4 hours ago
She wants babies like my 4 year old wants a new stuffed animal
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
Right? At minimum, if an ethical surrogacy system is possible, a birth parent should be vetted for ability to care for the kids and all the paperwork should be as locked down as possible before anyone is pregnant and signing contracts for babies. It seems that the surrogacy agency takes more than half of what goes to the birth parent? That seems exorbitant, at minimum everything should’ve been ironclad in terms of legal paperwork and advising as well as emergency backup plans for if the kids can’t go to the intended parent right after birth.
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
I wonder where she got the idea that movie rights and documentaries would net her that much money.
Particular_Car2378 | 21 hours ago
She doesn’t seem to have a firm grip on reality honestly.
bitter_liquor | 16 hours ago
The fears regarding Zhou did seem to me somewhat grounded, with things like him promising to be there in person but then not showing up on time. I know that this was due to circumstances beyond his control, but it would raise questions for anyone in Simpson's position. She had reason to be cautious at that point.
On the other hand, there is just so much racism dripping from every corner of this story. Zhou's actions being interpreted as shady and opaque in the most malicious way possible, and Uncle Kent being openly hateful towards Simpson and Black people in general. Zhou himself didnt seem to express hatred (at least from what we can see in the article), but he did consider Simpson a good candidate for surrogacy because her race would make her more fertile (???). Meanwhile, every step of Simpson's legal defense relied heavily on defending the US against "adversarial foreign powers" or shit like that, and operated purely on Simpson's assumption that Zhou was an evil Chinese baby farmer without even trying to contact him to verify how legit his claims were. The case got really fucking far without anyone having the presence of mind to collect a single testimonial from Zhou, his relatives or the Chinese government about his background.
Like others said, biggest direct villain here is the surrogacy agency, and indirectly, it's the US and Chinese governments. China for making it nearly impossible for hopeful parents to have access to surrogacy, and the US for... all that.
shruglifeOG | 20 hours ago
2500 is not enough to cover care and expenses for three sick infants. She basically went broke keeping them which is why I doubt this was a money grab for her. Dreaming of a big payday that would solve all her financial woes is maladaptive but not necessarily malicious.
brienneofbark | 19 hours ago
The $2500 was compensation in addition to his covering their medical expenses, clothes, diapers, etc. The article said she spent the initial money (over $100k) moving into a nicer apartment and putting a down payment on her dream car. Though she’s entitled to spend it however she wants, there is a strong case that she was withholding information and updates in an attempt to extract more money from the IP.
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
I think, ethically, you have to choose between saying you’re withholding children from a dangerous and unfit parent and coercing that person into paying you by lying to them about the kids. .
That’s a grift. Even if she was in a tough spot, which she was, that means she’s either endangering her kids for small hits of extorted cash (if we believe she believes Zhou is dangerous). Or it means she was relatively unthreatened by Zhou and willing to extract money from him by lying about providing him with 3 of his biological children. It does appear that zhou was attempting (poorly) to legally adopt and raise these kids from before their conception.
shruglifeOG | 18 hours ago
The contract stated he was responsible for covering any lost wages. Was she supposed to rush right back to work after a high risk pregnancy with triplets? I just don't see how that's extortion. He agreed to 2500 a month (which is criminally low IMO) and paid late every time and then tried to negotiate it down to 1000 a month. She has an older child to support. Who is gouging who?
Whole thing could have been avoided if he got the visa and parentage order on time
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
Where are you seeing any of that? It doesn’t say he was late each time at all, for one
No-Package-3808 | 12 hours ago
From other articles. The surrogate was paid ~130k and I read that this specific agency takes about half. I'm not sure if the 130k is what's left after taking half or if half is taken from 130k. The total surrogacy cost was listed at around 300k. Either way, the situation started years ago. She could have rented a nice place and gotten a luxury car when she thought things would go swimmingly-- before the twins turned into triplets or an early c-section was needed. But even if she hadn't, the money would be long gone by the time the kids were toddlers. Triplets in the NICU is a million dollar challenge in the US. She got medicaid for the kids and also cared for them-- that costs money. Another international surrogacy case involving twins resulted in a $1M bill for the paying parents. Sometimes the parents don't ever come, especially if the kids are sick. But even without the medical challenges, with triplets the initial money would be long gone and 1000 - 2500 wouldn't cover much. 1000 a month wouldn't cover decent diapers. I had to pay about 2500 a month for childcare for ONE child. It's a sad and tragic story all around. All of the adults are problematic, but some media outlets are race baiting all around. And it's working.
GlamGlam561 | 6 hours ago
Calling that amount criminally low is laughable. The father of her biological children can likely barely rub two nickels together, much less afford to pay her $2500/month.
PartyPorpoise | a day ago
What a mess. Commodifying human bodies and lives like this will inevitably have problems. The only reason I don’t support outlawing surrogacy entirely is because I worry that doing so would send it underground and make things worse.
ellski | 22 hours ago
I think given the reproductive technology usually required it's hard to do in an unregulated fashion. Where I live it is legal, not for profit, and heavily regulated. Therefore it is very rare.
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
Still, with wealthy clientele it would be doable. Especially in countries that struggle to enforce regulations for one reason or another.
ellski | 20 hours ago
Yeah I can't imagine it happening in the countries I'm most familiar with but there's plenty of much less regulated places that's true
DeadWishUpon | 22 hours ago
I don't like surrogacy, but at the very least should be regulated. Not only the surrogate should be checked but also the parents. Since is an international issue, there should be collaboration between nations. That is obviously day-dreaming countries do not care about children.
WoodHammer40000 | a day ago
Could upend “the industry”.
No no it’s definitely not a dystopia we’re living in.
Complex_Exhibition | 17 hours ago
I’m worried about Isaac and Solomon’s development and wellbeing. They’re living though multiple ruptured attachments: to their late brother Christopher, to Simpson, their ?step-GC-Dad, to their big half-sister and now, their ‘nanny’. They don’t seem to be doing well.
The 7 hours in a pack-n-play and the lack of stimulation is not healthy for their development either.
It sounds like Ted Zhou (the IP) genuinely loves his kids, even though it reads like he hasn’t met them yet. I hope he can afford good, long term family therapy if they end up in his care. They will all need the help.
Individual_Fun9418 | 16 hours ago
Breaks my heart reading about the babies being 'looked after' by nannies getting paid $4.5ph, that are being left to lie down for so long that their heads are changing shape. Damn.
LouCat10 | 16 hours ago
The woman in the article, Simpson, is all over Facebook claiming that the author of this article completely misrepresented her and didn't tell the full story. After reading her comments, I am more convinced that she is mentally unwell and should not be allowed to parent these children.
nyarlathotepkun | 13 hours ago
I also think she's not entirely fit to raise the children-- but how many American parents are?
With that being said, the paragraph about the living conditions in Simpson's trailer and her pretending to sleep when being asked any challenging questions was.. unsettling
lisa_lionheart84 | 4 hours ago
Where on Facebook is this happening? I've tried to look it up without any luck.
SeventhBlessing | 23 hours ago
This genuinely sounds like the children were being kidnapped. This woman is NOT fit to care for the children — and while it’s more complex than that I’m just appalled for the poor children.
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
I actually don’t think it does. I think both parties handled it poorly but the villain is the agency that failed to facilitate basics. As
The article notes, there should never have been a situation where the babies went home with a parent not intended to adopt them or bring them to the adoptive parent. It sounds like Zhou was poorly informed and advised, by people who profited from international surrogacy’s complexity and did little to prevent harmful outcomes. The last names thing makes sense to me, it’s not unheard of to see people in Taiwan or China with last names or hyphenated names in order to keep a line alive. I imagine he started to panic when Simpson put herself and her husband on the birth certificate. Keep in mind, he likely has no idea what “I’m doing this so the triplets can get on my insurance, Medicaid” means, or whether it’s true in Florida or whether she’s lying to him, which she then does. She promised passports or something immediately in exchange for the last $2,500
PartyPorpoise | 17 hours ago
Agreed. With something this legally complicated, the agency should be a lot more proactive. I’m also wondering if their screening process for surrogates was inadequate. Maybe Simpson wasn’t really suited to be one.
llamiaceae | 17 hours ago
She definitely was not. Robust mental health and being done having your own children are standard criteria
PartyPorpoise | 17 hours ago
I had trouble finding good information on ideal surrogacy criteria so I wasn’t sure.
llamiaceae | 16 hours ago
Fair enough. The article mentions some and other commenters have mentioned a few. I wouldn’t have known otherwise
Wide-Pop6050 | 21 hours ago
I don't get how Simpson decided that the babies are hers.
>“I birthed them,” Simpson emphasized. “I’m the only mom they’ve ever known. I sacrificed my time, my energy, my sleep, my opportunities, my money, my finances to protect them.” She and her husband were the epitome of parents; Zhou was at most a sperm donor. The way she saw it, you can’t just pay and expect to get a baby: That’s selling children. Parenting was about being there, not about contracts or genetics.
Uhhh but that's not what surrogacy is. I see where she's coming from, but she agreed to something and now is surprised that she's expected to abide by it!?
This is wild:
>When Zhou still planned to pick up the boys from the NICU, Simpson had spent hundreds of dollars on clothes and collected bassinets. She told me she and Lincoln wanted seven kids and had struggled with infertility for years; when Sasso filed to terminate Zhou’s rights, Simpson was on fertility medication.
PrincessConsuela52 | 16 hours ago
The agency was predatory. Simpson should have never been approved as a surrogate.
Many agencies have surrogate candidates go through clinical interviews and have psychological evaluations to make sure they have the ability to maintain emotional boundaries. They often require the surrogate’s personal family be complete.
ACRC clearly cared more about money than the interest of any possible children, which is evident by them routinely transferring double embryos despite medical societies discouraging the practice.
nyarlathotepkun | 13 hours ago
The entire industry is predatory
f0xbunny | 15 hours ago
Oof
Wide-Pop6050 | 10 hours ago
I agree completely with that. However, she still has agency too.
PrincessConsuela52 | 10 hours ago
I never said otherwise. Of course she has agency.
However, it should be the agency’s contractual responsibility to their clients, as well as their ethical responsibility to any babies facilitated by them, to vet who they choose as surrogates.
The US should also be doing a better job of regulating these agencies to prevent stuff like this from happening.
Individual_Fun9418 | 16 hours ago
She's definitely in the wrong but I think the surrogacy clinic is more to blame, why in the hell did they allow her to be a surrogate?! (Okay clearly the answer is money but I digress)
The bare basic criteria of being a surrogate is to not want any more children of their own. Pregnancy is inherently risky.
PartyPorpoise | 17 hours ago
Maybe she didn’t realize how attached she would get to the kids. But yeah, weird of her to pull this argument when she agreed to it in the first place.
Sea_District8891 | 23 hours ago
Paid for surrogacy should be illegal. Full stop. This is just the latest horror.
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
The only reason I don’t support outlawing it because I worry that doing so would push it underground and make things worse.
ignoranceisbourgeois | 21 hours ago
There’s already a black market that agencies work with, surrogacy and egg donor farms is a huge issue. If surrogacy is outlawed it’s going to be easier to regulate since you can’t just show up with a child
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
Yeah maybe you’re right. Still, who does the kid go to in those kinds of situations?
Sea_District8891 | 21 hours ago
It's primarily just the US where this kind of thing is legal, and where there is a 50-50 consistent rule of law, so "intended parents" feel comfortable signing a contract with an agency and a gestational mother. We don't need to do this. Many other countries have decided that the risks of abuse are too high. Again, no one "deserves" to have a child. See: Jens Spahn, conservative MP in Germany who voted to keep paid surrogacy illegal in Germany but used it in the US himself. He *in particular* doesn't deserve a child.
ellski | 22 hours ago
IMO surrogacy at all should be banned. It removes the child from their mother which is a huge trauma.
Sea_District8891 | 22 hours ago
I am more worried about the women who become surrogates, but sure.
Background_Hat377 | 23 hours ago
I mean I dunno, there are really legitimate reasons why surrogacy may be needed, but it for sure needs to be regulated more
joanofarchaic | 23 hours ago
This isn’t legally actionable but the more I read about surrogacy, the more I think it’s only ethical if the surrogate is someone the couple actually knows.
shruglifeOG | 19 hours ago
That would make handing over the child even more fraught emotionally. In theory, surrogacy seems like it could be done ethically but in practice, I don't see it
Sea_District8891 | 23 hours ago
No one deserves to have a child. And the ethics of “renting” someone else’s body to incubate your embryo (or one you paid to have created) are just too complicated and wrong.
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
I’m not sure whether surrogacy should be legal, but let me steelman it (in one way):
Every day in every country on earth, women,
Sometimes lots of them, are being coerced or forced to give birth to children they don’t want to. Sometimes they get to keep the children, sometimes they have to keep the children, sometimes the kids are taken away. All of this for no money or compensation. This happens using religious pressure and the threat of shaming, this happens because of threat of force, this happens because of laws against abortion, this happens because shady adoption agencies facilitate coercing moms out of babies. It happens more in some places and less in others, but obviously it happens in both Florida and China right?
In that context, how can we ethically prohibit women from using their reproductive capacity for their own gain? As the article makes obvious, Simpson had a lot to gain from the arrangement, which is why she sought it out. I don’t think she should have been approved as a surrogate because of her mental health and other factors. But if a mentally robust woman who meets other reasonable criteria wants to pursue her self interest by having a kid for a gay couple in exchange for a life changing amount of money? I don’t want to forbid that, in a world where her neighbor is being pressured into a 5th kid by an abusive husband, despite their financial situation and her postpartum depression. That really happens,
Probably more than you think.
Again I don’t think it’s the only argument. But I think discussing the above matters
This is also also applies to sex work
Sea_District8891 | 18 hours ago
Mentally sound people without financial problems don't sign up for sex work or surrogacy.
LouCat10 | 16 hours ago
I know it's anecdata, but I know two people who have been surrogates, and I would consider both mentally sound. Some women have very easy pregnancies, genuinely enjoy being pregnant, and consider it a fair exchange.
llamiaceae | 17 hours ago
We all live in a world where we’re obligated to pay for a whole lot of things just to stay alive. Imagine a brilliant woman who is also dirt poor. Maybe she was born poor, maybe something shitty happened in her mid twenties like a spouse’s death or disability or medical bills. Maybe she wants to get a 4 year education to make more money for her family for the next 40 years while she works. Or maybe she wants to put her kids through school. Or maybe they need a house.
You think she’d have to be mentally unwell to consider trading surrogacy for enough money to do part or all of those things? I think lots of people wouldn’t choose it and a few women would.
In a world where women are routinely forced to birth children they don’t want, I think it’s fucked to say profiting from your own body is not allowed.
The fact that the amounts of money here are genuinely life changing affects my argument. Some people will spend that on cars, like Simpson, but some will pay for a loved one’s chemo or their own tuition or something else that matters to them.
Sea_District8891 | 17 hours ago
You can create a strawman/strawwoman in this case, of course I can create a story in my head that sounds like it would make sense - and that doesn't mean that it reflects the real-life situations here. Paid surrogacy is ethically corrupt and exploitation.
llamiaceae | 16 hours ago
I really don’t think this scenario is imaginary. If you think these amounts of money aren’t life changing for the average American I think your income is clouding your judgement. You haven’t responded to my main argument once, across multiple replies. Why should women be forbidden to advance their economic status via voluntary surrogacy? Are you really going to pretend it is bad and exploitative 100% of the time? What’s your actual response?
frommywindow20 | 16 hours ago
Not the person you’re replying to, but by this logic, do you think it should be legal to buy/sell organs? Both organ donation and pregnancy have huge health implications.
llamiaceae | 16 hours ago
People can donate kidneys, but it’s much rarer. In contrast, the average woman has multiple kids. I’m a staunch feminist. I think women should birth and raise children if and only if they want to. But I don’t fundamentally think carrying and birthing a child for someone else is immoral and I don’t think it’s always harder or worse than many jobs people do every day.
I’m not certain if surrogacy should be legal, but my current stance is women should not be prohibited from giving birth in exchange for money, given that women routinely give birth in exchange for nothing at all. I think women doing surrogacy face risks. But women having kids “traditionally” face huge risks that society loves to ignore. If we take the exact same woman, why is it legal and legit for her to have a kid and keep it literally because a condom broke, but also not legal for her to carry a kid for her infertile best friend? Or to carry a kid in exchange for life changing money?
To me, it’s paternalistic to say women can use their bodies if the church says so or if their husband says so or just because they happen to get pregnant, but that women can’t deliberately have a kid to better their own lives.
So to answer your question, I think it’s more obviously ethical to let women practice surrogacy than to let people sell kidneys. We don’t expect people to sell their kidney 2.1 times in their life. We routinely allow and expect women to birth multiple kids uncompensated.
hahasadface | 12 hours ago
Your logic doesn't make sense. Why does the fact that something bad can happen against someone's will (rape, unwanted pregnancy) mean that they should be allowed to do that thing for their own financial gain? Changing who benefits doesn't make a bad thing less bad. Someone might abduct and human traffic my child so I should be able to sell them? Kidneys are stolen from people unwillingly so someone should be able to sell theirs?
llamiaceae | 12 hours ago
You seem incapable of reading my post or answering my question: why should a healthy women who has already had kids of her own be legally forbidden from helping a friend for free? Or from helping an individual or couple in exchange for money, as Simpson did?
We allow women to decide to have babies all the time for any reason or no reason at all. It’s wrong, I think, to forbid them to have a baby for money. There isn’t automatically more coercion with money than without.
I don’t think Simpson was a case of ethical surrogacy obviously, but I think plenty of women are competent to make that choice
To be clear, being paid to be a surrogate isn’t “selling a human” just like adopting a baby isn’t selling a human.
hahasadface | 21 hours ago
Every adult in this story is terrible
WinterMedical | 22 hours ago
It’s truly all so vulgar. These people ordering up babies like it’s Amazon. These women seeking purpose and meaning in their lives by renting their wombs. We really need national legislation on this issue and strict enforcement.
EliBadBrains | a day ago
This is the endpoint of "parental rights": children are a commodity for their legal parents. Their father, from the start, saw them as a status symbol as and a means of reconciliation for his own parents rather than full live beings. Their gestational mother was trying her best with limited means and information, was taken advantage in a system set up to prey uoon vulnerable and poor people.
Remember that the billionnaire class has gone all-in on eugenics and surrogacy to have "premade" offspring they can also use as status symbols. These people see children as things.
Background_Hat377 | a day ago
Definately awful all the way around, but I wouldnt call the father a billionaire class. He made 22k USD a year as a teacher in China...
And the unfortunate thing is... you are right, many parents (even naturally conceived ones) see their kids as property or objects
PrincessConsuela52 | 16 hours ago
And I think it’s very ungenerous to say Zhou only wanted those children as a status symbol. Do I think wanting children to bring your parents back together is a good idea? No. But that didn’t seem to be his only motive. The article mentioned how he grew up an only child and how alone he felt. He seemed to want the family he didn’t get to have. Is that selfish? Yeah. But I think most people have children for similarly selfish reasons.
You could say Simpson was also commodifying those children. I do not doubt she cared about them and was concerned about their well-being. However, she also talks about how the children would be the answer to her money problems, and how she believed she could make $500k/year for life by selling their story to Lifetime. And let’s not ignore the fact that she tried to become a surrogate again while all of this was happening, it just “didn’t work out”. Or that she was on fertility medication trying to have more children with her husband. Wanting seven children while you can barely afford the ones you have could also be considered selfish.
Both Simpson and Zhou were taken advantage of here. Zhou was taken advantage of by Uncle Kent and ACRC, who played off of his desperation to be a father. Simpson was taken advantage of by ACRC as well as people like Rick Scott who are using her story to further their anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ agenda.
Individual_Fun9418 | 17 hours ago
You're way too easy on the birth mother.
wmcscrooge | 23 hours ago
Wait, you're siding with the birth mother who immediately spent all the money given to her on a new place to live and an SUV with all the bells and whistles and promptly ran out of money. Ran out of over $100k no less. Over the guy who makes $22k and just wants a family? And spent all his money until he had nothing left and went into debt just to give it to a woman who was supposed to be taking care of kids and instead used it as rent instead of keeping her job?
TreenBean85 | 22 hours ago
The article sorta insinuates that she might have wanted to keep the babies from the start by mentioning her fertility struggles. She could have seen surrogacy as a way to pay for fertility treatments and get money from the IP. I don't think she's this perfect victim/savior that people are trying to paint her as in some of these comments.
PartyPorpoise | 21 hours ago
I doubt that was her plan in the first place, but some of her behavior does seem kind of iffy.
Individual_Fun9418 | 17 hours ago
I think in surrogacy cases like this I usually feel more sympathy for the birth mother than anybody else, but in this case she is so clearly in the wrong. She's a grifter. I don't think I believe that she went into this with bad intentions, but her actions following are insane. Purposefully ignoring him then getting a lawyer to try and block him from being the parent by claiming he had ghosted her??
Zornorph | 20 hours ago
Yeah, if you read all the way to the end, the surrogate turns out to be really trashy. She's sympathetic at first, but the more you read about her, the worse she gets.
Shortymac09 | 4 hours ago
The birth mother isn't taking care of the kids...
nyarlathotepkun | 13 hours ago
What an absolute fucking mess
mountains-and-sea | 21 hours ago
After reading so much about surrogacy, I bluntly and unashamedly do not agree with it at all unless it's an altruistic situation between sisters without a profit gain. It is absolutely never what is best for the child, which should always be the main consideration in anything dealing with children. And there's undeniably a dystopia class aspect too, as poor women sell their bodies to rich entitled people. Poor sweet innocent babies! Every baby deserves to be born into a loving warm home and to be carried by a mother who loves them.
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
I’m not sure if it should be legal. But it’s easy for me to imagine people who can give a child “what is best for them” as well as anyone. Gay male couples and couples who struggle with infertility and couples for whom one or both are older or unable to carry a child. People whose health requires medications that prohibit pregnancy.
None of those groups of people are incapable of giving a child a wonderful home or upbringing. Having the equipment to produce a child, as many straight couples do, doesn’t award people the skills or means to raise them
Sea_District8891 | 17 hours ago
No one "deserves" a child. Full stop. That is not a judgement on gay couples' ability to be excellent parents or create a loving and safe home for a child, but it doesn't give them, or ANYONE the inherent right that should be protected by law to create a child via surrogacy. Not the Kardashians, not a gay couple, not a single parent, no one.
llamiaceae | 17 hours ago
I’m literally saying that “deserves” is irrelevant to the question of children. No one gets children because they deserve them. Most people get kids by having sex themselves. Some people get kids by having a friend get pregnant (free surrogacy). Some people get kids when a relative dies. None of these people get kids because they are deserving. I’m not sure why it’s more right for a straight couple to accidentally have a baby because the condom breaks than for a gay couple to ask or pay someone to have one on purpose, after years of deliberation and saving money.
Sea_District8891 | 17 hours ago
Asking someone...with money/economic coercion. Replace "gay couple" with "Khloe Kardashian" - for me it's the same.
llamiaceae | 16 hours ago
You seem to have trouble reading my text and responding with something relevant or constructive.
mountains-and-sea | 10 hours ago
Whether someone is capable of giving a baby a good home or not is irrelevant to the question, in my opinion. There are already so many babies in this world in need of loving homes and, I'm going to be honest, I think the actual pregnancy is important to the baby's growth. A pregnant mother has all sorts of hormones and emotions and is connected to the baby (or should be, in a healthy pregnancy). I don't think anyone should be paying someone else to carry a child that the the surrogate is not going to love. That is not what's best for the child. Regardless of the type of loving home the buyer can then provide. If it was really about loving and caring for a child, then these people would not be so set on the genetic aspect of it and would adopt.
And yeah, no one deserves a child. I absolutely support gay or infertile couples adopting.
llamiaceae | 10 hours ago
My understanding is that it’s kind of a myth that there are lots of babies up for adoption. Just because a gay or infertile couple wants to adopt an infant, doesn’t mean there’s one available.
weisp | 23 hours ago
I can't read these stories, poor babies
I understand the yearning to be a parent because I had fertility challenges and finally had two healthy babies via IVF
I'm so glad my country doesn't allow commercial surrogacy
LouCat10 | 16 hours ago
This is a little slippery to me, as someone else who had a baby through IVF. I don't feel like it's my place to say commercial surrogacy is wrong, when it's a very related industry that allowed me to become a parent. And I was lucky that it worked for me. For those who have tried everything else, I don't judge them for turning to surrogacy because I know what it's like to want a good outcome so badly.
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
I can understand.
I guess one hard question is, if you hadn’t been able to have your kids via IVF, would you have wanted to have one via surrogacy, if that was the only way and you could afford it? I have no idea, not having been in that situation.
weisp | 15 hours ago
Great question, I would def consider surrogacy but will have to manage my own with lawyers and paying with my own money because we do not have surrogacy agencies in our country
meri471 | a day ago
I didn’t love that at some points the author seemed to be trying to “both sides” things with little asides about Simpson. I don’t care that she stuck the kids on Cocomelon for four hours, I don’t care about the SUV she bought, the actual legal quagmire and its implications are engaging enough.
The author was probably trying to imply that Simpson’s motives were hardly pure, and I can see how Simpson’s fears of trafficking were likely genuine and not unfounded. But stick to that, their TV habits and how long they stay in the pack and play are immaterial.
ne0ame | a day ago
I don’t know, I think DCF being called on Simpson for the boys welfare, even outside of the Zhou parenthood drama, is a detail worth mentioning.
Similarly, the daycare workers concerns about her following the boy’s medication routines and her plan to create a documentary about the story and make “at least half a million” are also interesting.
I am extremely sceptical of the surrogacy industry, and wealthy foreign IPs, but I still think it worth remembering that individual cases have nuance. It also sets up Zhou’s motives & sense of urgency
Ultimately the real victims of these situations are often the children
Illtakeaquietlife | a day ago
Plus one of the triplets passed away!
angiesrightleg | 19 hours ago
All 3 triplets sleeping in a single pack n play. Being left in the pack n play for 7 hours. One dying because he was so unwell with breathing issues. I'm sorry this is just negligence and I'm shocked she was able to keep them for as long as she did.
thepolkagirl | 16 hours ago
completely agreed. most of the article she is painted as a savior acting out of the good of her heart but like - who leaves their kids in a pack and play for 7 hours, let alone two babies in one? other mandated reporters think they aren't getting proper medication? There are some real caregiving red flags here.
Individual_Fun9418 | 16 hours ago
I'd love to hear other people's opinions, I thought the line "instead of ID photos, she sent pictures of the babies sharing a crib lined with pillows and blankets" was insinuating that the baby who later died passed away due to SIDs.
I interpreted the line as a warning that she is negligent, because I thought it was common knowledge nowadays that a 'fluffy' cot filled with soft items leads to a very very dangerous risk of suffocation. On the other hand, I can also see the authorial intent to be that she's a caring parent by lining their bed with cosy soft items. Would love to hear your thoughts.
angiesrightleg | 16 hours ago
I picked up on that too and thought it was foreshadowing. My daughter slept in a pack n play and they're not that big, definitely not big enough for 3 babies/toddlers to sleep in and the thought of them being left in there for 7 hours breaks my heart.
conquestical | 14 hours ago
Also—I found it odd that she was asking for pay for lost wages since she couldn’t work, but the boys were also in daycare? Perhaps I missed a line about her going back to work at some point.
hulahoop10 | 21 hours ago
>Whenever I asked a question that was even a little bit challenging, she pretended to sleep.
She sounds mentally ill tbh.
wmcscrooge | 23 hours ago
You're also coincidentally leaving out the park where the mom pretended to fall asleep every time a hard question was asked for her. And then did actually fall asleep. While a stranger was in the room alone with her kids. I think that's all relevant.
Especially the fact that at one point she had basically quit her job and was living on Zhou's salary. . . .
conquestical | 14 hours ago
Yes!! One would think that if you were so pressed to adopt these kids, as you are their rightful parent, you’d be doing everything to get your story out there. A long form article on the situation is gold in the court of public opinion. I’d be taking it SO seriously. At the very least, I wouldn’t be laying down!!
hahasadface | 21 hours ago
No it's not, both are neglectful, so is the reports from the daycare, and the death of the one triplet and near death of the second should also raise concerns. She doesn't seem like a stable person.
venus_arises | a day ago
I wish the article really had gone in on the biological dad - I think the author acknowledges that there is a sticky needle to thread there, and while everyone agrees that China's demographics are precarious... like, where does that leave him too? The how and why this one guy ends up in a position with three babies is worth at least three articles.
That poor triplet tho.
OneMorePlantPlease | 18 hours ago
Right and he's very poor and makes 22k/yr but also has like $200k for this surrogacy journey and is totally ready to care for three infants into adulthood.
Individual_Fun9418 | 16 hours ago
He very clearly does not have $200k, the article constantly mentions that he's taking out loans, maxing out credit cards and asking his dad for money. Also worth mentioning that he didn't go into this journey expecting to have to spend that much, things kept going wrong and unfortunately this is an industry where scams are common and huge.
Definitely don't think he's ready to care for three infants into adulthood, but then again neither is Simpson. She's relying on his money, and even when he sent her over six figures she somehow ends up with only $13 in her bank account. Someone is getting super rich off of this and it's neither of them!
Consistent-Bee8056 | 2 hours ago
Due to much lower cost of living, $22k per year is a solidly middle class salary in China -- you can live and save comfortably on that, especially in less expensive cities. And Chinese people generally are much more frugal and can often save a lot more money than Americans do. The culture is that people often live with their parents for much of their adult lives, so many people can save almost their their entire salaries that way, and there's generally more of a frugal/penny pinching culture where you don't buy anything you don't absolutely need. Plus economic and real estate booms in recent decades have increased a lot of ordinary people's wealth through dramatically rising property prices. (I have a friend whose parents bought two apartments in Shanghai thirty years ago for around $30k, they recently sold both for around $4 million).
So in China, it's not uncommon for people who make modest salaries to have very substantial savings that they've built up over their entire lives. The article says that this guy spent his entire life savings on these babies, and even sold a property to fund them.
source: I'm an American who has spent the last decade living and working in China, and I personally observe all these cultural differences
Maroon14 | 16 hours ago
She’s clearly not a fit parent. She’s over her head.
questionsaboutrel521 | 23 hours ago
I also think it’s interesting that the author essentially “buys” the story of the IP without obviously being able to see him in person the way that she observed Kyla. I’m not saying Kyla is a perfect legal parent (although that will matter for an adoption petition), but I think the skepticism around Zhou is fairly warranted. How did this supposedly middle class guy who is broke get all this money? It would be easy to fake a few Zoom calls and doctored documents are all over this story.
Fundamentally, are we really supposed to hand an infant American citizen halfway across the world over to a person who really isn’t well verified through a third party?
llamiaceae | 18 hours ago
Eh, her skepticism only evolved after she signed a contract with him and spent nine months happily prepping to give him babies. He was the parent they both agreed upon from prior to conception, they exchanged $100,000+ for that outcome, and she immediately puts herself on the birth certificates and extorts cash from him in exchange for promising to change it? That’s not fear of kidnapping.
I’m not saying he should’ve been okayed for this adoption scenario. But I don’t think her behavior was a reasonable response to genuine fears of kidnapping
Consistent-Bee8056 | 14 hours ago
It's not some mysterious ghoul, it's just someone in another country. Chinese people are just as real as you are, and can certainly be verified -- they don't deserve undue suspicions just because they are Chinese? Zhou is the biological and legal parent, and I'm sure he offered proof of his identity to the lawyers and courts that are currently handling his case, as well as to the journalist who seems to have looked deeply into his background.
And middle class Chinese people generally are much more frugal and can often save a lot more money than Americans do. The culture is that people often live with their parents for much of their adult lives, so many people can save almost their their entire salaries that way, and there's generally more of a frugal/penny pinching culture where you don't buy anything you don't absolutely need. Plus economic and real estate booms in recent decades have increased a lot of ordinary people's wealth through dramatically rising property prices. (I have a friend whose parents bought two apartments in Shanghai thirty years ago for around $30k, they recently sold both for around $4 million).
So in China, it's not uncommon for people who make modest salaries to have very substantial savings that they've built up over their entire lives. The article says that this guy spent his entire life savings on these babies, and even sold a property to fund them.
source: I'm an American who has spent the last decade living and working in China, and I personally observe all these cultural differences
rosehymnofthemissing | 18 hours ago
Paywall-free link:
https://archive.ph/1k2Xb
Personally, I don't care about the adults. To me, this isn't a left or right wing issue, a gender issue, or even a contract issue. I care about the children, and what is best for them, now and throughout their lifespan. Children are not products. They are not goods and services. They are not entertainers or money-makers for their families (talking about you, parents who exploit their children online) - nor should they be. They are human beings. They have separate, distinct, individual, unique needs and development, as a population group. They are not people's accessories, play things, or extensions of a parent. Surrogacy should be about the children - and it isn't, not contractually or legally - even when surrogacy goes well, happy, and "right."
Society must do better.
A good book to read (not my book) is It's NOT Fair: Why It's Time for a Grown-up Conversation about How Adults treat Children by Eloise Rickman. I don't know the author from Eve; she just wrote an excellent book about a needed subject. And Children's Rights and needs should be at the forefront of Surrogacy, Foster Care, Adoption, School, Education, etc.
AMAZON & OTHERS
• www.thriftbooks.com/browse/?b.search=Eloise%20Rickman#b.s=mostPopular-desc&b.p=1&b.pp=50&b.oos
• www.amazon.ca/Its-Not-Fair-grown-up-conversation/dp/1911617176
• www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Fair-grown-up-conversation/dp/1911617176
• www.indigo.ca/products/its-not-fair-5?variant=46334891819218
ONLINE | SOCIAL MEDIA
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11879172/
• https://cbc-network.org/issues/making-life/surrogacy
• https://eloiserickman.substack.com/
• www.instagram.com/mightymother_?igsh=MTd4am9yZ20wYWE2NQ==
• https://voilamontessori.com/37-parenting-radical-act-eloise-rickman/
lntujndi1234 | 19 hours ago
Is there a non-paywall link? Thanks
rosehymnofthemissing | 18 hours ago
Paywall-free link:
https://archive.ph/1k2Xb
wildidyll | 18 hours ago
I can’t even read 3 paragraphs. This woman’s “spidey senses” should’ve gone off WAY EARLIER. Just what the actual heck was she thinking from moment one?
This is like those people (Chinese unmarried uninvolved male and female) in Arcadia who hired a bunch of surrogates and had a bunch of babies for WHO KNOWS WHAT PURPOSE.
Evil is afoot, I’m afraid.
Individual_Fun9418 | 16 hours ago
You should read more than 3 paragraphs. There's something deeply wrong in this situation and she's not the innocent victim she portrays herself to be.
SpecificPuzzled85 | 10 hours ago
Read more bc she’s insane and those babies need to go to their Dad so fast it’s not even funny. Then look her up and see how she’s behaving all over facebook…she’s unwell
ElderberryNo5595 | 4 hours ago
Can you direct me to any of her FB comments? I’ve tried searching and haven’t been able to find them.