"We're Selling Humans, We're Buying Uteruses"
One woman's story of being born through surrogacy
Olivia Maurel didn’t learn the truth of her origins until she was 30. What she found changed everything, and fueled a mission she says she’ll pursue “every day for the rest of her life.”
Olivia was born via traditional surrogacy in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised between France and the United States. For three decades, she lived without knowing the full story of where she came from. Her real birth certificate, the one bearing her biological mother’s name, had been sealed at birth. In its place, her intended mother’s name was written as if nothing had been replaced.
There was no indication anywhere that a surrogate had carried her.
“A lot of children born from surrogacy will never know,” Olivia says. “They’ll just have that instinct, or they’ll be a little bit…screwed up. They’ll grow up with mental problems, they’ll grow up with problems, and that’s really sad.”
When she finally discovered the truth at 30, she turned to social media, not just to process her own experience, but to make sure others could hear a side of the surrogacy story that rarely makes it into the headlines.
“There’s Nothing Right With Surrogacy”
Speaking in a webinar with Abolition GPA, Olivia was unflinching about where she stands.
“It’s so important to educate people on surrogacy,” she said. “People just think that it’s a beautiful little butterfly world where everything goes right, and that love is sufficient and that the child will grow up and everything will be fine, but, no, no. Not everything will be fine.”
We’re using wombs, we’re paying for women’s uteruses, we’re buying children.
There’s nothing right with surrogacy.
What Happens in the Womb Doesn’t Stay There
One of Olivia’s most powerful arguments concerns what science tells us about the prenatal bond, and what the surrogacy industry asks everyone to ignore.
“It’s been proved that in the womb, a baby creates a lot of links with its mother throughout the nine month period of time,” she explains. “It hears her voice, it tastes what she’s eating, it feels her emotions. There’s a lot happening in the womb. This link is supposed to last after the birth, and it doesn’t.”
She describes the moment of birth for a surrogacy-born child as a compounded trauma: the shock of entering the world, immediately followed by separation from the only person the baby has ever known.
“The baby, the newborn, that’s going to go out into the real world after birth, has first of all to make that big jump into the real world, and it’s cold, it feels awful, and they’re asking the baby to be detached from its mother, who nourished him for the last nine months. That is absolutely traumatizing for a newborn.”
She pushes back on the idea that surrogates can simply be coached out of forming an attachment: “The surrogate mother is told to not share any link with the child within the womb. She’s been made to think that she’s not supposed to have a link, but the baby inside the womb will link to its mother. That’s natural, that’s human, that’s instinctive…you can’t tell that baby that it’s supposed to be detached from the mother that’s feeding it inside the womb.”
And on the assumption that newborns are blank slates: “We assume everything’s fine. We assume that the baby in the womb doesn’t feel anything, and we assume that at birth, kids don’t remember anything. Of course we do. Of course, there’s a memory, of course there’s trauma, of course the fetus remembers everything. People don’t want to believe, that’s the problem.”
The Cost She’s Carried
For Olivia, the trauma wasn’t abstract. It shaped her relationships, her mental health, and her sense of self.
“I lived it as an abandonment. I feel as if I was abandoned by my birth mother… as I was sold. There’s nothing worse than for a child to feel that at one moment in my life I was literally sold for a check.”
The ripple effects followed her into adulthood. She struggled with relationships, terrified of rejection. She smothered friends out of fear they’d leave, and they did. She searched for maternal figures in older women throughout her life. Eventually, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
“I do thoroughly believe that that trauma led to having a literal mental issue,” she says. “All of my life, I thought that I wasn’t enough for people because apparently I wasn’t enough at birth for my mother to keep me, and money was more important for her than me.”
Understanding Without Excusing
Olivia has come to understand some of the circumstances that led her biological mother to become a surrogate. The woman had recently lost a child to a traumatic event, had four other children to care for, and had no stable income.
“Surrogacy is seen as a good way out, financially speaking, for a lot of women,” Olivia acknowledges. She doesn’t blame the individuals — she blames the system that made it an option in the first place.
“The problem isn’t the people who are turning towards surrogacy. It’s the fact that surrogacy is out there, and it is an option. That’s why I don’t hate my parents. I’ll never blame them for using surrogacy because it was just an option that they took when they thought they didn’t have a choice. But, if it wasn’t there, they wouldn’t have gone through surrogacy.”
She’s also been contacted by intended parents who regret their decision, and by surrogate mothers on the verge of suicide, consumed by guilt, grief, and the feeling of having been used.
Adoption, Abandonment, and the Difference
Olivia draws a careful distinction between her experience and that of adopted children, while acknowledging the deep similarities.
“We have the same problem with being abandoned, the same issues growing up, I suppose, with being abandoned. However, with a child that’s been abandoned and then adopted, we’re trying to give him a better life. Surrogacy…we’re just signing a contract and buying a child, and hopefully it works out.”
She also notes one key difference: honesty. “People usually don’t lie when they adopt children, but people lie a lot when they go through surrogacy; they do lie a lot to their children.”
On the bright side, her search for roots led her to find a half-brother and three half-sisters who welcomed her unreservedly, something she called “the best present I could ever have had in my lifetime.”
A Right to Children?
On the question of infertility, and of gay male couples seeking children through surrogacy, Olivia is direct.
“Having a child is not a right. It’s not because you’re infertile that you have to have a child. It’s not because you’re homosexual that you have to have a child… It’s not a given right for you to have a child. For them and for infertile couples, surrogacy shouldn’t even be an option…a child isn’t a right…children have rights, but we have no right to children. Ever.”
She doesn’t say this without compassion for people who grieve infertility. Her point is that grief, however real, doesn’t create an entitlement to a child obtained through another woman’s body.
“There are so many children willing to have a home, to have a happy life, to have a mom and a dad that love them…Adoption isn’t perfect…but adoption is necessary…However, surrogacy isn’t a necessity.”
What She Wants You to Know
Olivia shares her story in interviews and podcasts, is a spokesperson for the Casablanca Declaration, and has written a book about her experience. (See below to help donate to an English translation.)
And she has a message for anyone considering surrogacy:
“It’s not worth it…love isn’t sufficient. The love that they’re going to give to this child won’t be sufficient. We’re always, as a child born from surrogacy, going to try to find the other half of ourselves. There’s always going to be trouble – mental problems, problems during adolescence, there’s always going to be some issues because of surrogacy. Love will never be sufficient, unfortunately…I think it’s also really important to remind people what surrogacy is – paying for a womb, paying for a woman’s body, buying a baby, literally buying a human being. We’re forgetting what it really is and what it really means. We really need to remind people of this all the time, and if I have to do this every day for the rest of my life, I will be doing it.”
Her conclusion is unambiguous: “We’re trading with humans, we’re selling humans, we’re buying uteruses. It should be abolished worldwide.”
Follow Olivia on X and consider supporting an English translation of her book about her experience.
Them Before Us is a global movement committed to defending children’s right to their mother and father. We believe that adult desires should never come at the expense of a child’s fundamental needs.
We are not professional lobbyists or political insiders. We are ordinary people with an extraordinary conviction: children must come first in every conversation about marriage, family, and fertility.
We exist to make one thing clear: when adults sacrifice for children, society thrives. When children are forced to sacrifice for adults, everyone pays the price.
Learn more or support our mission: www.thembeforeus.com
 | A guest post by
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A friend of my husband announced his wife was becoming a surrogate. I guess it was for the money. He was shocked when people reacted negatively! “It’s none of your business” he complained.
As it turned out she had multiple embryos implanted and two survived. They are being placed in two different homes.
So not only do the babies have no bond with the woman who carried them, they have lost their sibling.
This is a horror show!
Maybe they need to put the surrogates and the prospective parents under the same scrutiny that we, adoptive parents, had to go through.