MovieChat Forums > The Baby Dance (1998) Discussion > Raises a sobering question

Raises a sobering question


I saw this movie on LMN and only caught the last half hour. This film raises an interesting real-life question. In surrogate situations, do the adoptive parents actually draw up formal contracts?

"We contract you to produce an infant for us. Gender is unimportant, but it must be healthy. You must produce proof to our satisfaction that you are observing a healthy pregnancy. NO smoking, drinking, drugs of any kind (even over-the-counter medications such as aspirin). No working in an environment where chemical exposure is possible. We will subject you to OB appointments every 2 weeks to monitor the fetus. If the child is deformed in the womb, we require you to terminate the pregnancy & try again. This time, give us a healthy baby. If complications occur during delivery that render the child deformed physically or mentally, we are released from legal or financial obligation, and we will take legal action against you for breach of contract".

The brutal reality is that everyone wants a perfect baby. If it's not, the birth parents usually make the choice to keep & raise THEIR child, regardless. In an adoption or surrogate, it's much easier to back out ("I didn't sign up for this"). There are two real-life cases of choices that tug at the heart:

On Discovery Channel, there was a case in approximately 2003 of a woman who gave birth to a girl without a face. Her skull had not formed properly & she literally had a face that only a mother could love. Her parents chose to keep her, and she has to undergo reconstructive surgery to this day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq9l2r3Ax9k&feature=related

There was a case on 60 Minutes in the '90's of an American wealthy childless couple that traveled to Russia to adopt a newborn boy. As the couple was making arrangements to go to the Russian hospital, something happened to the child (he developed a high fever or some kind of infection) that rendered him brain damaged. The Russian authorities did not tell the American couple, and they went back home with their "prize" after paying thousands of dollars in cash. Back in America, they noticed the child was not responsive. They took him to a pediatrician, and after giving him tests, the doctor told them the awful truth. The child was profoundly retarded. He'd never be able to walk, talk, feed or dress himself. He'd need constant care for the rest of his life. The couple was devastated. Not only could they not produce a child of their own, but they'd been "taken" and "stuck with a lemon". Somehow they were able to send the child back to Russia, where he died in a hospital. I remember Ed Bradley saying to the woman "This is not a bag of potatoes you buy in a market, and that you take home, find that the potatoes are spoiled, and you bring it back. This is a child".

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http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/health/surrogacy-kelley-legal-battle/index.html?c=&page=0


I guess this somewhat answers the question.

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If I were adopting, I would take in a child whose mother smoked. I
have bipolar disorder and my husband has Tourette's Syndrome. We talked about adoption at length because we knew any child we had biologically would probably
be imperfect. The reason we never went to an adoption agency is because both my therapist and my psychiatrist hinted that we'd be turned down as a result of our problems. As it happens, I'm seven months pregnant while writing this (and I don't drink or smoke at all) and so far no birth defects have been detected. Still, if my child wasn't tall or thin or even handsome, I would still love him like a mother should love her child.

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