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- Surrogate mother Melissa Cook fears financial ruin
- "If you get the baby, you have to pay for it"
- "I do not want to abort"
- UPDATE:
Surrogate mother Melissa Cook fears financial ruin
Melissa Cook wanted to give birth to a strange child as a surrogate mother. Now she is pregnant with triplets - and the father of the children demands that she abort one of the babies.
She wanted to fulfill a stranger's heart's desire and deliver a child for him - but now Melissa Cook from California faces the worst decision of her life. In her belly, three healthy babies grow up instead of the one hoped for - and one of them is supposed to be aborted according to her father's will.
$ 33, 000 should be given to Melissa Cook for her surrogacy. By in vitro fertilization their three embryos were used. The babies came from the sperm of their client and the eggs of another donor. Her contract states that she will receive $ 6, 000 for each additional child. But evidently the father, whose identity has not yet been revealed, did not expect all three embryos to develop.
In fact, he does not want triplets and has asked Melissa Cook to have one of the three babies aborted .
"If you get the baby, you have to pay for it"
His father's lawyer told her, "As you know, your father's rights are immense if you do not abide by the terms of the contract. If you do not comply with the agreements, you lose the right to all agreed benefits. In addition, you will have to bear all the additional costs of education and medical care for this child ".
Melissa Cook had previously written a letter to her father asking her, "The doctor has given me three healthy embryos. The chance of all three developing well was great ... If you only wanted two babies, why did you have three embryos inserted? "
"I do not want to abort"
The surrogate is now in the 17th week of pregnancy, the father had expressed his desire for an abortion when she was in the 9th week. California law prohibits abortion as soon as the embryo is viable outside the mother's abdomen. This is usually the case between the 24th and the 26th week.
In an interview with the New York Post, Melissa Cook emphasized that she did not want to abort one of the babies, but she feared the financial pressure: "These are human beings. I have established a connection to them. Killing one of them would not be right. I do not want to abort, but I'm scared. I do not want to suffer. "
UPDATE:
In February 2016, the triplets were born healthy. Melissa Cook has successfully prevailed against the father's desire for an abortion, as reported by the English news site DailyMail. However, Melissa Cook was not allowed to see the babies after giving birth. They were immediately taken away from her, she did not even know how much the babies weighed at birth.
Her lawyer said, "We have a mother here who fought for the lives of these babies who want to care for these children, and you can not tell a woman who fought so hard for these babies' lives that their fate is now not her thing anymore. "
Melissa Cook is now fighting for custody of the three children she was supposed to be giving birth to.
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Continue reading:
► All facts about in vitro fertilization
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Video: Melissa Cook - Can a court force a woman into an abortion?
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