Fertility Inc.: When the Surrogate Gets Left With the Bill

Over 10,000 times a year, someone in America says yes to carrying a child that isn't theirs.

Nia Trent Wilson was one of them.

Every time I tell somebody my story, like I guess people are taking a bag because it's

not every day that you need a surrogate.

Nia lives in Houston and has her own 14 year old son.

She's also been a surrogate three times.

The first experience was nothing short of amazing.

The mom and the dad were at all of the appointments and then I delivered the baby.

They named her after me.

Her middle name is my name.

What Nia remembers most from that time was how well the intended parents treated her.

The delivery had been a complicated C-section and the parents supported her during her recovery.

They had it where they paid out of pocket for me to have my own hotel slash recovery room

with my own nurse, my own maid, my own chef, my own everything and I'm just like what

is going on here?

They really wanted to take care of you, it sounds like.

Over the top, I've never had like I was not allowed to move like it was almost unheard

of.

It's been a few years now but Nia is still in touch with that first family.

I go to a lot of the birthday party still.

I go to a lot of family functions.

I'm treated like family more than anything and it's just an amazing experience for me.

Nia sent us videos of her hanging out with a baby that shares her name.

I was able to create a family single handedly and to me that became my superpower.

You know, and I saw the way that I changed my intended parents and I saw how thankful

and how grateful they were.

It really touched me.

Nia went on to become a surrogate a second time and had another successful experience.

So she decided to go for it again, a third time.

How would you characterize the third one if you were to put it in a word or two?

A nightmare.

A nightmare.

The third surrogacy was a complete and total nightmare.

That's putting it nicely.

That surrogacy would not only threaten Nia's life but would also turn into a massive

legal battle.

You know, I think Nia's experience speaks as a testament to what can happen for a woman

who choose to become a surrogate and the lack of safeguards that exist for those women.

So, I'm just grateful to be here, you know, to tell my story.

Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Kidditson, it's Friday, March 6th.

Over the next four Fridays, we're bringing new stories from the fringes of the fertility

industry.

Today, they took the baby, she was left with the bill.

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Since the very first baby was born via surrogacy in 1985, the use of surrogates has exploded

in America.

In these days, people typically encounter the idea of being a surrogate online.

A lot of surrogates, their first entry into the world of surrogacy is through Facebook

or Instagram or TikTok.

Come along with me on my trip to get medically cleared as a gestational surrogate for the

second time.

My colleague Catherine Long has been diving into how it all works.

You know, there's a growing number of surrogacy influencers, people who are surrogates and

posting about what they call their surrogacy journey.

So I decided to start sharing my surrogacy journey and I'm thinking, why not share it

from the very beginning?

I picked an agency I'm going with for my next surrogate journey.

Demand for surrogates is high right now and there aren't enough people willing to do

the job.

So surrogacy agencies, the companies that connect surrogates with intended parents, have

gotten creative about recruitment by using online testimonials, for example.

I spend a lot of time watching people who are trying to recruit women to become surrogates.

And Catherine found that running through a lot of these posts was a central message.

There was often an expectation that surrogates should be doing it for the right reasons.

You have a small part in changing someone's life forever.

I think at the end of the day, there is an altruistic motive.

They want to help people, they want to give the gift of childhood.

And so...

Not because they want to just make money.

Right.

There's something in your heart that tells you that you are meant to do this for someone.

And now here I am, someone's hope and that just feels incredible and it's a privilege.

It cannot be all about the money and it really isn't.

But of course, for a lot of surrogates, the money is a huge motivator.

It cannot make anywhere from around $30,000 to over $100,000.

One surrogate I spoke to at length talked about putting it in her child's college fund.

Another surrogate I spoke to talked about putting it towards legal fees because an ex was

trying to retain custody of their child and she was in court fighting that out.

People who become surrogates are not often destitute, but they are often struggling financially.

For Nia Trent Wilson, who you heard from earlier, her first surrogacy made her $30,000.

The second time, the amount ballooned to $50,000, which she says felt like a significant bump.

I said, wow, like it was a big and especially carrying twins.

So you carried twins the second time?

You're the second time I carried twins.

Oh my God.

That's not easy.

That's not easy.

And you'll never guess I had twins at 36 weeks and they were both almost eight pounds

a piece.

Wow.

We're able to grow some really healthy babies.

Yes.

It was amazing.

That high of helping to build families, not to mention the money, convinced Nia to do it

again, a third time.

At first, everything seemed great.

Nia spotted an ad on Facebook for an agency called Angels Creation Reproductive Center,

or ACRC.

It had glowing reviews on Google and the agency told Nia that she could get paid $70,000

this time.

Because I'm a three time surrogate.

So every time you have a surrogacy, most of the time it's just going to keep going up.

So again, I collected my medical records.

I'm doing the whole intake process.

Within weeks, the agency approved Nia and matched her with a gay couple in Washington, DC.

Their names were Jason St. Floor and Ricky Lovell Scott, a lawyer and a filmmaker.

What were your initial impressions of them?

That they were nice normal couple and that they just really longed for a child.

The intended parents each wanted a genetic baby, which means they each wanted a donor

egg to be fertilized with their respective sperm and transferred into Nia's uterus.

If it worked, it meant Nia would be once again caring twins.

Doctors warned that caring twins a second time would be risky, but Nia agreed to try.

She signed a surrogacy contract with the intended parents and the embryos were implanted.

A few weeks later, St. Floor and Scott joined Nia for a doctor's appointment to see whether

the transfer had worked.

At doctor's appointment, they discovered that only one baby took.

And when they discovered that only one baby took as opposed to two, they started calling

me a baby killer.

A baby killer.

Nia says that one of the intended parents started rolling on the floor crying.

Well, how did you feel in that moment?

A mix of emotions, embarrassed, belittled, ashamed, like, you know, like, and I'm already

pregnant.

So I'm already on all of these IVF medicine.

So I'm mentally and emotionally like vulnerable right now.

Nia calling me a baby killer and you're rolling on the floor.

And I'm just like, what did I do wrong?

And I have to remain strong because I do have this child.

So I can't buy into their emotions for like a better term.

I have to, you know, you know, carry the baby with a level of decorum because I am responsible

for this child.

And I know that being sad or not okay is not okay for the baby.

St. Floor and Scott did not respond to requests for comment.

After that day in the doctor's office, Nia says the couple's attitude towards her shifted.

And they started raising questions about the agreement that Nia had signed at the start

of the process.

Her surrogacy contract, Katherine, what kind of a contract is a surrogate like Nia typically

tied to?

Once a surrogate agrees to match with the parent, they will sign a, what's called a gestational

surrogacy agreement.

What that agreement does is give the intended parents the parental rights over the children

that surrogate is carrying.

The surrogate agrees not to seek those parental rights.

And the surrogate also might, depending on the contract, agree not to engage in certain

activities during the pregnancy.

What are the things that a surrogate could do that could result in a breach of contract?

I mean, the surrogate could use drugs.

The surrogate could engage in risky sexual behaviors.

Surrogate could travel more than 50 miles away from her home.

Surrogate could, in some extremely restrictive contracts, drink water out of a plastic water

bottle.

Some contracts are very worried about that.

Or what happened in Nia's case?

From my reading of the records that Nia has shared with me and the numerous conversations

I've had with her, it seemed like from that point, Ricky and Jason started taking steps

to probe whether Nia was in compliance with her contract, possibly in order to try to

find her in breach.

Nia could sense that something was off, so she started documenting all of her interactions

with the intended parents.

They repeatedly asked her to take drug tests, which all came back negative.

At one point, somebody called Nia's medical provider and they said that it was a doctor's

office and they asked the medical provider to fax Nia's medical records to them.

The person calling said their name was Gregory Lewis.

When Nia found out about this, she phoned the medical provider herself.

It was a medical testing company called LabCorp.

Nia recorded that call.

Yes, today, there's a call from a first name Gregory Lewis.

Yes.

I don't know what Gregory Lewis did.

Okay, but he gave us the account number.

It turns out that Gregory Lewis was the name of the notary, the intended parents had used

for Nia's surrogacy contract and the address that this Gregory had given to the medical

provider was actually an address associated with one of the intended parents, Jason St.

Floor.

If somebody has access to my records, I want to know why it was released.

Nia interpreted that as the couple trying to access her medical records without authorization.

At another point, Nia got an unexpected visit at home.

A social worker showed up at Nia's door and claimed that somebody had made a report that

she was using drugs.

She denies that she did and nothing amounted from that social worker visit.

Nia suspected it was the intended parents who called the social worker and she started

to worry what could happen to her own son.

If St. Floor and Scott kept making these kinds of claims.

I'm going to lose my child in the process of having all of this because this is some

serious allegation that you're putting on me.

A few months later, Nia got a diagnosis that made things even worse.

At an ultrasound, Nia learned she developed a very serious condition called placenta

acrita.

It's when the placenta embeds too deeply in the uterine wall.

The diagnosis meant Nia could lose her uterus or even bleed to death during delivery.

I asked Nia what went through her mind when she got that news.

Is that I would never be able to do this again?

That my whole serenity career is just done for and that I just don't want to die and that's

not as scary as it sounds as I start making preparations like with my mom, my son, and

my will, everything.

And so I wanted to make sure that all my fears were in order.

Those are some of the things that went through my mind.

Then a few weeks later, Nia went into labor.

She let the intended parents know.

I'm telling the intended parents that, hey, I'm in the hospital, I'm thinking about the

give birth.

They start arguing.

They said you weren't supposed to come to this day, how did the baby come early?

What did you do?

I was like, are you kidding me right now?

Nia was bleeding internally and was rushed to an emergency C-section.

I go to the delivery, I'm on this cold table and they're going to deliver the baby and

the doctor, he's like, hey, I'm going to see how much of this I can salvage or whatever

they're like, we don't know what we're walking into.

And the next thing, you know, I just wake up for about maybe about a half of a second

and they're like, need tell the baby goodbye and I'm like, you know, I tell the baby bye.

The baby was a girl and she was quickly whisked away.

Nia was not doing well.

In a turn of the sedation, even more because they're like, it's bad and they're like, you

know, so the crash cards start coming in there and everything.

That's only our membrane, like, and I know I was in surgery for a total of maybe six

hours at the same time of my life.

Nia's internal bleeding was bad.

The doctors had to remove her uterus and fallopian tubes.

She'll never be able to carry a child again.

Nia says the doctors moved her to the orthopedic floor to recover so that the parents, St.

Floor and Scott wouldn't be able to find her.

In the end, St. Floor and Scott went home with the baby.

But Nia's nightmare was far from over.

I knew that after I had the hysterectomy and they had the baby, they walked away.

I said, oh, yeah, they're not going to pay me and I was right, they didn't pay me.

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Despite the fact that surrogacy is a multi-billion dollar industry, it's largely unregulated.

And that makes the contract between the surrogates and the intended parents super important.

Because of conflict arises, it's what's in the contract that matters.

One of the key things the contract does is layout the terms of when and how the surrogate

gets paid.

In the case, the intended parents, Jason St. Floor and Ricky Scott, initially put $95,000

into an independent escrow account.

It should have been enough money to cover just about everything, had the pregnancy

gone smoothly, but it didn't.

For instance, after Nia's placenta accreted diagnosis, her doctors put her on eight weeks

of bed rest.

According to Nia's contract, the intended parents should have put more money into the escrow

account to cover her lost wages and child care costs.

They also should have compensated Nia for any complications, like her hysterectomy.

According to legal documents, the intended parents didn't do any of that.

By the time Nia delivered the baby, the escrow account was nearly empty.

My contract says that after I delivered the full amount is due and the full amount due

to me, still with the complications, with the worth of money, it was almost like $75,000.

Wow, you're still owed $75,000 and there was nothing left in the escrow.

With the escrow account depleted, there wasn't enough money to pay for Nia's health insurance,

meaning Nia didn't have coverage during her C-section and roughly six-hour surgery.

Ultimately, Nia is now on the hook for all the medical bills, $182,000.

What recourse is there for a surrogate who has an experience like this, where they're

not paid what the contract says they're owed?

Well, I mean, the most immediate recourse would be for her to hire an attorney and sue

the parents.

There's a couple of issues with that in this case.

I mean, one that's common to most surrogates is that as we've discussed, surrogates often

are not the most financially liquid people.

It's difficult for them to find an attorney who's going to take a case on contingency.

The number of attorneys who feel confident practicing surrogacy law is quite small and

often those attorneys are practicing law in such a way that privileges relationships

with parents and surrogacy agencies over surrogates.

Nia had another problem.

In her case, the parents weren't even worth suing because it turns out, according to

Catherine's reporting, Jason St. Floor and Ricky Scott were broke.

What I know from legal records is that in the months preceding his contract with ACRC,

Ricky Level Scott took out a $60,000 loan.

He only paid $7,000 of that loan.

It's not clear to me whether that money was going towards the surrogacy journey, whether

he took that $60,000 and put it into Nia's escrow account.

But it does speak to a pattern of this couple taking out loans or not paying what they owe

and then facing very little judgment.

The lender, so-fi, tried to sue Scott but had to drop its claim because it couldn't locate

him to serve him the complaint.

Eventually, Nia was able to find an attorney to help pursue the surrogacy agency, ACRC.

She alleged that the agency breached its contract with her by matching her with unsuitable

parents.

ACRC denies the allegation.

Nia sent me email chains and text messages she had with the agency and the parents.

And what was apparent to me was that the agency that Nia had worked with, they had stepped

back from taking any kind of active role in managing her relationship with the parents.

Right, what's amazing to me about this story is that she could see what was happening

around her and yet she felt like there was nothing that she could do.

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, some of the text messages she shared with me between her and the agency, it sounded

like she was asking them over and over again, like, what can you do?

Like, how can you help me?

Every time that something would go on, I was reporting it.

I was telling them, like, and that's what I've said to me a lot with the surrogacy agency

because I'm telling them what's going on.

I'm Eva and I'm calling and I'm like, I'm in fear for my life.

I have maybe at this time two, three police reports would stalk it and harass me in,

nothing.

In an email, ACRC said the agency had remained in communication with NIA throughout the surrogacy

process and that they provided assistance when concerns were raised.

When NIA finally had her day in court, the head of the agency of Testivide in Court that

really the only thing the agency cared about when they chose to contract with Ricky and Jason

was whether Ricky and Jason would be able to fully fund the escrow account.

In other words, whether they'd be able to put up NIA's $70,000 fee and some extra money

on top of that.

And they were.

And at that point, the agency considered them cleared.

They were good to go.

In court, ACRC CEO Shen Lee said the agency believed the intended parents ability to

place so much money at once into the escrow account was sufficient proof of their financial

suitability.

Ultimately, the judge sided with NIA in order to ACRC to pay her $41,000.

In his ruling, the judge called out the power imbalance between surrogates and agencies.

He said that ACRC was able to make money by treating NIA's body as a quote, profit venturing

business and that the company itself didn't take on much risk during the surrogacy.

In an email to the journal, the CEO said quote, ACRC remains committed to ethical and

responsible surrogacy practices into supporting both surrogates and intended parents through

what is often a deeply personal process.

NIA is still deeply in debt from her third surrogacy.

She says she's thinking about the entire industry a lot differently now.

My perception of it has changed because now, if you do wrong, there's nobody to report

you to.

There's nobody to shut you down.

They're just like, oh, well.

You can continue to keep ruining people's lives and just pick up shop and go across

the street and start it all over again.

I mean, it's kind of amazing because successful surrogacy is the highest high.

You bring life into this world.

You can help a family become a family, but then also it has the lowest low and it can

also ruin lives as well.

Yes.

Absolutely.

I can't even imagine what that almost had been like for you.

I, and I think I still haven't fully processed it because believe it or not, I'm still trying

to deal with everything right now.

So I've had no break, believe it or not, I'm still trying to work through everything

that's going on right now.

What I left this story with was a feeling that there's very few protections for a woman

who choose to be surrogates.

Many of them, many of them bear children and have excellent relationships with the families

they work with and it's not a problem.

The minority who have truly terrible experiences, there's very little that can be done to prevent

that.

And it also speaks to, I think, the way that the fertility industry has encouraged

and in some ways institutionalized an imbalance of power between people who are trying to have

children and the people who are helping them do so.

People like Nia, the surrogates, who are stepping up and choosing to make this part of their

livelihoods.

It kind of makes me think about what you said in the beginning about how all the agencies

and the people that are promoting surrogacy say, make sure you're doing it for the right

reasons.

It should just be that you want to give a gift to somebody.

I mean at the end of the day, this is a business and it's governed by contract law.

It's not a gift.

We're continuing our investigation into the fertility industry and how it can all go wrong.

I looked at my husband and he just goes, our money's gone.

This time, for the intended parents.

And I was like, no, there's got to be a mistake, like we're fine, there's got to be a mistake.

There was absolutely no mistake, our money was gone.

That's all for today.

Today, March 6th, the journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal.

The show is made by Catherine Burr, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Getcari, Isabella Jipal, Sophie

Coddner, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez-Dela Rosa,

Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espanosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singee, Lisa Wang, Catherine

Whalen, Tatiana Zameez, and me, Ryan Konutsen.

This episode was produced by Jiva Kavirma and edited by Colin McDonnellty.

Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard.

Our theme music is by So Wiley.

And the theme in today's episode was remixed by Peter Leonard.

Additional music this week from Catherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Bobby Lorde, Nathan

Singapak, So Wiley, and Blue Dots Sessions.

Fact checking this week by Mary Mathis and Kate Gallagher.

Thanks for listening.

See you Monday.

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