I began this, some time ago, when the hope that my family's most private business could remain private, or at least in the vain hope that I could in some way manage how the news about our family having a child reached the world.
You know, a baby announcement.
Little footprints and a ribbon, and perhaps a joke or two over why two apparently sane people would have a seventh child.
And until a month ago, that seemed to be how we would announce the birth of our last child, who has yet, as I write this, to make an appearance.
But now the circumstances behind his birth have been all over the news, because of the actions of one seemingly troubled man and one seemingly biased judge.
Long story short, eight months into a pregnancy that resulted, against majestic odds, from a frozen embryo, the woman carrying our child learned she was being divorced by her husband.
A hearing was promptly set to determine what our surrogate, Arletta, assumed would be a rubber stamp judgment, albeit a painful one: She would have to share custody of her son and daughter with the man who once promised to love her forever, but changed his mind when friends at work made fun of him because her pregnancy was starting to show --perhaps presuming she'd cheated on him, perhaps casting doubts on who wore the pants in the family.
Quickly, Arletta's husband showed everyone who was boss.
She lost custody for the duration of both children for the duration of the pregnancy, and perhaps permanently.
No one said she was a bad mother. No one said she was an uninvolved or unloving mother or an incompetent mother.
Her in-laws said they didn't like her much.
Her husband said she didn't always fold the laundry on time, I believe.
But basically, she got two hours a week and ever other weekend, and got evicted from the house she'd worked to buy and pay for because she chose to be a surrogate mother.
The judge in Casey County, Kentucky, didn't like that. He let Arletta's husband's lawyer basically accuse her of adultery. Because we don't have the same last name, he let the suggestion stand that my husband and I aren't married. He let the husband's lawyer hint that we were going to "sell" our baby to "some unknown man or woman." He said that surrogacy was possibly psychologically damaging to Arletta's children -- although he is not a psychologist, or even a family court judge. He saw it as more damaging than seeing their mother thrown out of the house by their father.
Arletta's mother-in-law threatened to stop babysitting for her children if she went ahead and gave a family who were her friends the gift of bearing their child.
Arletta's mother-in-law, who, with her father-in-law, called her a "liar" and a "con" in court (again, with no interference from the judge) had six children, but let family members raise all but one -- Arletta's husband, Jack. That was the son of Jack, Senior, the man she finally married, and, as she explained, the only child she loved. Such a history is not looked askance in Casey County.
But Arletta's act of courage and compassion is.
Moreover, under the law, any woman's legal husband is the presumed father of her child. In order to gain custody of our baby under most circumstances, that husband would usually have to sign a paper acknowledging that he did not want custody of our baby and that he was no biological relation to that baby.
Arletta's husband does not want our baby.
But he won't sign off, either.
It's one more way that he can make Arletta's life miserable.
And ours, too.
More than one reporter has asked, what's the "other side" of the story? What skeletons rattle in Arletta's closet?
But I've known this woman nearly two years. And so far as I can tell, there are none. I've seen her with her children. I've had lunch with her husband, who fully supported her in this selfless act, until he didn't anymore. He now claims he never realized what surrogacy meant.
The judge accepted that, too.
And that, gentle reader, is hogwash, because the clinic at which the procedure was done would not do the procedure unless both couples had been counseled by an appropriate psychologist so that they understood it fully.
On sites such as the "Family Scholars" blog, I've been accused of being involved with the occult and witchcraft because my favorite holiday is Halloween (I just like the decorations). Arletta has been advised to apologize to the man who threw her out, and beg his forgiveness. I've been called a "rich author" (and I surely am not) taking advantage of a poor girl from a Kentucky holler (Arletta has a degree in biology and is a building inspector).
Mostly, my husband and I have been accused of being Godless, heartless and careless because we DID NOT destroy the frozen embroys created three years ago in love and purpose, by the same people who would have called us devils for taking the other route, and destroying them.
It seems to me that Arletta's husband deserves no apology, but she does.
If it comes, I don't know that she will accept it.
I don't know that I could.
I think she is a hero.
She has gone on to try to deliver a healthy baby despite the greatest sorrow and outrage in her life. We can give her nothing, literally, except tea and sympathy as she waits in our house with her aunt to give birth to our child.
I also think that the personal politics of the judge who presided over her custody hearing had no right bringing his personal politics to bear on her personal life.
But Arletta's husband is the boss. He asked for exactly what he wanted, and he got almost all of it; and he intends to get the rest.
In Casey County, they call that justice.
Where I come from, they call it something else.
Jackie Mtichard
