Surrogate Mom Fights to Change Law After Being Ordered to Abort Baby Boy

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  
Live Action News

This time last year, Stephanie Levesque was fighting for the life of a baby that was not hers. The three-time surrogate mother had carried babies for other couples because she loved the joy it brought to their lives. But with the last baby she carried, a problem arose. At 16 weeks, after an otherwise normal pregnancy, the preborn baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a birth defect that prevents the left side of the heart from forming correctly, and affects blood flow through the body. The parents of the child wanted her to have an abortion; Levesque refused. This kicked off a year-long battle to save the life of the baby boy she carried — and now, she’s fighting to keep it from happening again.

Levesque said that before agreeing to carry a baby for the couple, they had discussed her views on abortion. 

“I thought we were completely on the same page,” she said in an interview with WFAA. “I had no idea that if something did happen, we’d be so divided.” But after the HLHS diagnosis, the parents ordered her to have an abortion.

“I’d been listening to his strong little heartbeat time after time after time, and so I was like, no – he’s fine! He’s going to make it – he’s strong!” she recalled. In response, the biological parents stopped paying for her prenatal medical care, but Levesque refused to back down.

At 16 weeks of pregnancy, the preborn baby Levesque was carrying would have suffered in this type of abortion:

The poor treatment Levesque faced, though, was only beginning. After the baby boy was born, she was allowed to take one quick look at him before hospital staff took him away. 

“I don’t know his name. I don’t know how much he weighed. I don’t know if they chose to do surgery,” she told WFAA. “I assume they immediately took him to the NICU, but I do not know, I do not know. I do not know any more today than I knew a year ago when I was discharged from the hospital.”

She eventually learned that the baby’s parents were considering refusing the life-saving surgery the little boy needed, so she once again took action to save his life. She got a lawyer, and the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office got involved as well.

READ: Surrogate mother who was pressured to abort sues for custody

“We reached out to the doctors involved and expressed our client’s desire and expressed our belief that if the biological parents did not authorize medical care today that other legal avenues will need to be taken,” her attorney said in a previous interview with WFAA. 

“We were hoping to hear from the opposing parents because it would have been the expected or humane or intuitive thing to respond. And another thing important to know, no doctor ever suggested an abortion was appropriate or necessary. Because these babies are born or treated all the time.”

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