Surrogate mother flees across country to give birth and save baby after parents wanted child aborted when ultrasound revealed series of disabilities

Crystal Kelley was paid $22,000 to have a baby for a couple in Connecticut…but she fled across the country and had the child after refusing their instructions to abort it when ultrasound scans revealed a series of disabilities.

In August of 2011, Crystal, who has two children of her own, fell into financial difficulties and offered her services through an established surrogacy agency to a couple who desperately wanted a fourth child but couldn’t have one.

They paid $22,000 to Crystal and then an embryo the pair had left over from a previous round of in-vitro fertilization was used on October 8th. Just ten days later Crystal fell pregnant and the thrilled couple asked to be as involved as possible throughout the following nine months.

The would-be mother phoned daily to offer morning sickness sympathy and gave Crystal and her two daughters Christmas presents and even paid out the monthly surrogate fee early to help her out.

That relationship turned sour, five months into the pregnancy last year, when surrogate mother Crystal Kelley was told the bad news by doctors. Doctors suspected that the baby had a cleft lip and palate, a cyst in her brain and serious heart defects. They couldn’t even see a stomach or a spleen.

Physicians at Hartford Hospital said the baby would need several surgeries after birth and had only a 25 per cent chance of living a normal life.

After this bombshell news, a letter was sent to Crystal’s midwife, in which Dr Elisa Gianferrari, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Hartford Hospital, and Leslie Ciarleglio, a genetic counselor, outlined the parents’ wishes.

‘Given the ultrasound findings, (the parents) feel that the interventions required to manage (the baby’s medical problems) are overwhelming for an infant, and that it is a more humane option to consider pregnancy termination,’ they wrote according to CNN.

However, Crystal, who is staunchly religious, disagreed and said that ‘all efforts should be made to give the baby a chance’. For the parents though, who had gone through three previous premature births that left two of their children with medical problems, the abortion was the most humane option.

Crystal refused to have an abortion – setting into motion a series of legal battles which led to her fleeing the state of Connecticut for Michigan to give birth to the child.

Rita Kron from Surrogacy International explained to Crystal the realities of bringing up a disabled child and said the parents would pay her $10,000 to have the termination.Crystal refused – demanding $15,000 to have an abortion.