We have previously blogged about how the international baby selling ring dates back to as early as 1996. Now, one of the surrogates that worked for Carla Chambers in the 1990s speaks for the first time about her experience:

In 1998, a New Zealand woman who acted as a surrogate for Carla Chambers and was going to sell her baby, spoke out. The woman, known as Racheal, said she answered an advertisement in The Evening Post in 1996 to become a surrogate mother.

She had already had two sons adopted out and wanted to help other couples. “I had been wanting to do surrogacy for a while. She [Carla Chambers] rang me two days later. I thought she was the wife. I didn’t realise she was a go-between.” Chambers told her the baby would be adopted by an American couple. Racheal was to be paid $10,000 and travel to the US, all expenses paid, to have the baby.

It took her seven months to get pregnant, during which she said she was given fertility drugs by Chambers that caused problems for her. “After about two months into the pregnancy I decided not to go ahead with it. It didn’t matter about the money. I just said, ‘no, I can’t do this’.” Racheal laid a complaint with police against Chambers while pregnant. “I felt what was going on was wrong. From my perspective, helping people adopt out, and in, is not wrong but her way of making babies for sale is not right.”

Racheal knew of about six surrogate mothers who had been involved with Chambers. A friend, who was already pregnant, had given her baby up for adoption to an American couple and been paid $8000. “If [Chambers] wasn’t getting paid for it and only helping those that wanted to be helped [it would be fine] but because it’s a business to her … I think she has to be stopped.”