Crystal Wilhite
What happens when a surrogate mother's death remains undisclosed because of non-disclosure agreements imposed by her surrogacy clinic?
Crystal Wilhite passed away unexpectedly on Wednesday, February 22, 2017 from complications related to premature labor from a surrogacy pregnancy. She left behind her husband, Aaron, and their two sons, AJ and Jordan. We only know about Crystal's death because another surrogate mother dared speak out, albeit anonymously, who said the following:
“Like me, Crystal Wilhite was a surrogate in my surrogacy therapy group hosted by the Center for Surrogate Parenting (CPS) She passed away in February 2017 from complications after going into preterm labor for a surrogate pregnancy. Following a blood transfusion she received after bleeding, she was discharged from the hospital earlier than she wanted, as she was still not feeling 100%, and then died at home from an embolism or blood clot.
I have to speak about this anonymously because I learned about Crystal’s death and the circumstances surrounding it at one of the CPS group therapy meetings,and from emails sent around by CPS to all of us surrogates used by them. CPS made it very clear that we were not allowed to publicly speak about Crystal’s death, and so I fear that CSP--one of the biggest surrogate agencies in California-- will sue me if I speak publicly and identify myself. But here is another photo of Crystal, her husband, and her own two young sons:”
A Go Fund page created to help Crystal's husband and children following her death raised $21,500 of the $25,000 goal. No mention is made on the GoFund page, or in any published acknowledgement of her life or death, that Crystal had ever served as a surrogate, or that she died as a result of complications related to her surrogacy pregnancy. Where there is no obligation to collect, track, or report any harms experienced by surrogates, including their death, we will never know how many other surrogate mothers, like Crystal, died as a result of complications related to their almost-always high-risk pregnancies. When there is no way to learn about how frequently these harms occur, there is no way for a would-be surrogate to to be sufficiently informed of the health risks involved in surrogacy, and therefor no way for her consent to be a truly informed consent.
Would Crystal have signed on to be a surrogate, and risked leaving her young sons motherless and her husband a widower, had she been informed of the many harms associated with surrogacy, and their frequency? We will never know. All that we are left knowing is what can be gleaned from comments left on the GoFund page:
"Such a beautiful, giving soul. So incredibly sad." "Blessings and prayers for those boys." "What a great loss of a beautiful spirit." "Crystal, you were loved and will be missed."
Sources for this story
https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-loving-memory-of-crystal-wilhite
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“I think commercial surrogacy should be banned completely. They're putting women at risk without even telling them the risks. There is no such thing as informed consent in this situation. There is no way to tell any young woman, so that she could actually understand the risks. The research isn't even being done to determine the risks. There's funding for fertility, but no funding to do research on the risks. It's a multi-billion dollar industry to make designer babies. There is all that funding. But no research on women like me who were surrogates. " |
Brooke's doctors and the fertility industry surely knew that as a surrogate who had already carried her own three children to term followed by five surrogate babies, Brooke was at high risk of grave injury. But in the end, none of them deemed Brooke's life, and those of the infants she carried, to be worthy of any news coverage or more than the $7,000 raised by GoFundMe to cover the cost of her funeral. --From Brooke Brown’s Story: What happens when surrogacy kills you.
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Right now, young women agreeing to egg donation cannot give informed consent because information about long-term health risks doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist for my daughter who passed away, and it doesn’t exist for anyone now. Until the health consequences are known and understood, it would be unconscionable to legalize commercial surrogacy’ given that it will greatly increase the demand for donated eggs, and risk the lives and health of many more young women.
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I don’t think surrogacy should be legal, when even the most common of serious and debilitating health risks isn’t required to be disclosed. I don’t think surrogacy should be legal, when much-needed health care for longer-term pregnancy-related harms is not required or made available. The lives of too many perfectly healthy and fit young mothers and wives are forever compromised or irreparably harmed, not only to their own detriment, but to the detriment of their families who need them. I suffer deeply, every single day, as do my children and my husband. No amount of money was worth this cost to us all. |