A suggestion made by Alexia Tsouni
The whole speech:
so first of all I’d like to thank everyone here um that invited me to tell my side of the story um as a child born from surrogacy and now fighting against surrogacy I’m grateful and extremely honored to be in such a place uh this is more than I expected and I am very emotional I have to say um my entire story I will share with you with a lot of sincerity a lot of humility uh it’s so first time I’m speaking in front of such a big group of people that are so bright so I’m a little nervous I have to say but I do think that my words today are important um because all too often unfortunately uh we forget the people that are the most affected by surrogacy but these people they never give uh their consent they never have their word and those are the children that are born from surrogacy these children that are ripped from their mother’s of birth to be sold to strangers kind of like cars that you order from factories that you I mean pick options that you may or may not like um and these children are considered just like vulgar objects and products I am today a product of surrogacy created sold bought and I’d like to tell you my side of the story so you can understand how affected me and why today we can’t just simply regulate surrogacy um we have to abolish it purely and simply for the good of the child and of course for the rights of children a child should never be the subject of such a contract and above all should never ever be the subject of a transaction so as I said we’re now going to travel back 40 years um that’s when my story all started even
before my own birth my intended parents meant my intended mother already had a son with another man my parents had a very successful business very very smart people I have to give them that um my mother was 11 years older than my father the money was flowing they were at the peak of their careers and I do believe that at some point my mother kind of forgot her biological and so at one point they decided to start a family but it was a little too late at this stage my father was 48 my father sorry was 37 and my mother was 48 and my mother already had problems with infertility according to my father with whom I had a recent discussion he wanted a child from his own jeans so adoption was completely out of the of the uh picture and surrogacy to them was the only option rather than giving up on having a child selfish decision I believe but it’s their story so they looked up the United States and more specifically Louisville Kentucky um to find an agency that could help them find a surrogate mother my parents first gave the agency of course a list of criteria concerning the woman that should what she should look like I personally was born through traditional surrogacy not national surrogacy so my surate mother is biologically related to me even though to my opinion it makes absolutely no difference if the mother is biologically linked to the child or not because to me the mother is the one who has the child inside her womb for 9 months and of course gives birth to the child about a year goes by where in 1991 my parents um had a surrogate mother but she wasn’t holding the embryos and so they had to be rematched with what would be my biological mother um and thankfully she uh she got pregnant only two months after signing the uh the contract it’s often said that the agencies look at women’s psychology through very thorough tests that they make sure they don’t have any debt to pay but we know that that’s not true $14 billion was the surrogacy market in 2022 and do you honestly think that we’re going to look too closely at women who might even lie during their interviews I don’t think so my case is a perfect example my biological mother and um she wasn’t mentally stable she had a huge history with depression but on top of that just before I was born she had lost a son age of 2 and A2 years old in an absolute tragic domestic accident so I think you can put yourself in her place mentally she wasn’t there at all she was completely devastated after that she was in debt and she had to put on a brave face for her family her children and her husband this agency that only saw what it wanted to see when it hired her and that’s the money that she could generate they abused of a Sit of the
situation of a woman that needed money to feed her children and pay her bills so I was born on December 10th 1991 a date that was chosen actually by my attended parents because funny enough it fell between my intendant mother’s birthday who was born on December 5th and my biological mother who was born on December 15th I had to be a Christmas baby actually but even that was decided for me can you imagine in surrogacy births can even be planned out and decided and I’m not quite sure how that is in the best interest of the child and that’s where it gets a bit emotional for me um as soon as I was born I wasn’t placed in the arms of my biological mother the mother who had cared me for 9 months um the one who fed me the one who spoke to me the one who I felt every emotion invade her when she was pregnant the woman who in the end was the only person I knew no I had to take the Great Leap of the infant out of my mother’s womb into the cold auster world the hospital lights and I had to be we sold and finalized the transaction into the arms of My adoptive parents whom I didn’t know of and that unfortunately was the first trauma that would write the rest of my life the trauma of Abandonment so as a child I was already showing signs of the trauma the trauma of uh abandonment my parents couldn’t leave me I would be hysterical I was a very complicate child um I was always afraid of rejection I had trouble making friends my parents couldn’t leave me anywhere sleepovers parties I would I would go in this hysterical crisis and so they couldn’t leave me I was just afraid unfortunately that they I would suffer a second abandonment every time they they left me but at that point in time I was already going through an inner battle how could I build myself with without knowing where I came from during my adult life things got worse I sank into alcohol addictions I even was raped um because I was constantly putting myself on itch I made several suicide attempts my life wasn’t the best um I had a hard time having normal friendships I would suffocate people because I was afraid that they would leave me I was alone I was very very lonely I sang into a lot of depressions I’m sorry I was also never able to find a good job I wasn’t stable and I had a hard time finishing my studies then then thank God I met my husband uh who gradually helped me rebuild my life as it is today with a lot of patience a lot of love he let me lash out all my emotions and understood exactly why I reacted the way I would today I have three beautiful children but unfortunately they in turn suffer from my traumas my daughter my oldest elanar suffers from the trauma of Abandonment and my son Theodore my second suffers from the trauma of rejection unfortunately they suffer in turn from a traumas because I do thoroughly believe that all of these are transgenerational so surrogacy didn’t just affect me thank you thank you surrogacy didn’t just affect me unfortunately it affects my own children today they of course have help I had proof of the fact that I was born from surrogacy through a DNA test when I was turn when I turned 30 I’m 31 today but that was the physical proof because I always knew inside of me inside that I didn’t fit in I had problems with my mother I saw that I didn’t connect with her I connected with my dad because a little bit more because he was biologically linked to me but things didn’t seem right and I knew inside me something was wrong we children we not stupid you know we’re very very smart people and not so long ago uh I was diagnosed with bipolar disease shouldn’t shock any of you after everything I just told you my biological mother so my surrogate mother she herself battles with mental issues and I do believe I inherited that from her but how could I know I never had access to my medical records on her side and everything was hidden from me and she could have lied during the process eventually in fact when I got pregnant from my first child Eleanor I was scared to death I was
scared to death because I didn’t know what I would be passing on to my baby cancer a genetic disease mental health issues it’s mind-boggling to me to find that in that it’s in the best interest of the child to hide all of this information from their from from them all their of their lives sorry and that is a brief summary of my life very very brief I could speak for hours on my life and all the problems that surrogacy has caused me there are always consequences look at me two people my intended parents 31 years ago they made a small decision then a bigger one and then a more trivial one and one decision after another I came to the world and on that day I was the consequence of a small Choice made by two people at a time when I didn’t even exist and this Choice it defined my entire existence I’m a consequence and I hope that soon it will be me who will bring about consequences to abolish the atrocity of surrogacy but be careful in my words I you’ll never see me blaming my parents they used a process that was just an offer an option offered to them on a silver PL platter and they didn’t have the strength to resist it today I don’t feel any hate hatred for them I don’t blame them I love them but however I do blame the system that is slowly but surely allowing surrogacy to be legalized first we approve the use of surrogacy for medical reasons such as infertility after we accept it for social reasons and then we accept it for anything and everything and for reasons of human trafficking the sale of children the unavailability of the human body for ethical bioethical reasons surrogacy has to be abolished but in my humble opinion and I’m not uh a doctor or I’m just a child the greatest reason to abolish this monstrosity is for the sake of the child for his or her rights for a psychic balance that he or she like me may never ever regain and I’m just going to finish with this and this is to all of you that may think that this is normal to I mean surrogacy is normal and we should maybe regulate it if just one child like me has encountered so many problems in his or her life as a result of sergy that should be enough to convince all of you that there’s nothing good about this process and that nothing can make it ethical despite all of your attempts to persuade yourself otherwise thank you for your time