A venture capitalist goes to extremes to punish her surrogate
wired.comSo I read the whole story...this Bi character sounds like every bad Silicon Valley yuppie stereotype rolled into one, with a big dose of legit mental illness. The lady sounded extremely manic. Don't know if it is just rage bait, but sure worked that way.
It’s an interesting tale of what happens when you have enough wealth to insulate you from the insane decisions that a manic episode can generate. An ‘average’ person pursuing this sort of harassment campaign would end up institutionalized, at least temporarily. They would at least have someone tell them straight up that they need help, something this woman has probably never had to face (at least since being wealthy)
I feel bad for this woman, she’s trapped in a manic prison by having enough wealth to turn everyone into enablers. I’ve seen active mania and how it affects decision making and the perception of reality in the people suffering under it. I’d much prefer a lack of guardrails nudging me towards treatment instead of wealth enabling me to engage in a public campaign of harassment.
Sometimes a lack of consequences is more debilitating than facing the consequences of your actions, if facing those consequences can set you on a better path, something I’ve learned from personal experience with chemical addiction. I used to do a lot of drugs, and so did Zappos founder Tony Hsieh. The main difference between him and I is that I eventually ran out of money and had people attempt to talk some sense into me instead of enabling me to death, something which I am very thankful for today.
I appreciate the point you are making.
I had someone save me. Not from my own behavior, but from the mental health collapse I suffered, after the bizarre and damaging choices of someone else completely undid me and my circumstances. My gratitude to the person who held onto me until I could start mending will never fade.
I am very glad you also had good people there for you. We all need those people.
> I feel bad for this woman
But it's a little difficult to feel sympathy for this lady. She is relentlessly destroying a vulnerable persons life, who already had her own grief and health repercussions to deal with. As her husband who openly disagrees with her puts it, as part of her "grieving" process.
I hope this situation ends with legal justice that reflects the realities.
Given Cindy Bi is on her way to becoming famous, it won't be as unidirectional from here.
It's also not just her wealth but her personality. For better or for worse, someone as headstrong as her attracts a certain type of person, and the article showed that even her own husband was afraid of getting involved...
> Bi’s husband focused on stabilizing the family, a move he credits with saving their marriage. He blamed the hospital, not Smith, but told me that the litigation is “her grieving process.” He tried to stay out of the legal stuff so that Bi couldn’t blame him too.
I honestly feel bad for the family, because I've heard many stories about this type of familial dynamic from children who grew up inside them...
Absolutely. It was escalating through the story, but this paragraph nailed it:
> She also hired psychics to give her answers. As she tells it, they all blamed Smith. One suggested that an ex-boyfriend of Smith’s had turned her against Baby Leon. Another claimed to see traumas on Smith’s belly and said she was clearly having rough sex. He warned: “She has something to hide.” When Smith refused to release her medical records unless nonpregnancy information was redacted, Bi saw it as confirmation that Smith was hiding crucial details.
What in living fuck do psychics have to do with a surrogacy process?
Also, this:
> SAI countered that there was “no documented bleed” on the date in question but clarified that there was “some light pink fluid which the doctor was not concerned about.” SAI said Smith asked the doctors to tell Bi directly, and that the contract gave Smith two weeks to tell Bi. “That’s emergency information,” Bi said. “She should have told me right away.”
You're going to have a hard time convincing a court that an obstetrician noted, and was unconcerned about something but that you believe it was "emergency information".
> If Bi had been told, she believed that Leon would be alive. She would’ve insisted on a C-section immediately.
A layperson insisting on a C-section at what would have been ... 27-28 weeks gestation? Where viability is ~70% at best? There's so much to poke at there. Ostensibly, Bi had a contract with the surrogacy agency that "guaranteed" a "well baby". One, who writes that contract? And seems to me the mere act of "insisting" on a C-section (which let's also be clear, has a risk to the mother, though lower) at that gestation would be at odds with any "guarantees".
This story sounds like the worst consequence of American liberalism and capitalism in one.
This would be a hit TV show on par with Baby Reindeer, if it was ever televised.
This has nothing to do with liberalism. Money thinking it has dominion over others. Eugenics, creating databases of wombs and controlling what a woman does with her body. That is all right out of the republican playbook. Look up Peter Theil and palantir, Vance’s maker. Same old story, new tech bro faces.
This is a fever dream of a nightmare.
It's like mixing teams chat work culture with pregnancy. Just a giant bizarre wtf.
Among all the incredibly depressing and shitty stories about late-stage capitalist consumer culture I've heard, this has to be one of the most depressing and shittiest.
As someone who is not in the world of surrogacy: how much control does someone typically have over a surrogate during the pregnancy? Also what are you supposed to do in the event a surrogate has irreparable harm like losing a uterus or death?
> how much control does someone typically have over a surrogate during the pregnancy?
The original article makes it clear: The product is fully controlled all the way to "The Island" [1]
And that is achieved not by direct legislation but by the lack of it. That lack is filled by contract law and an expensive, convoluted legal system which puts the surrogates in a precariously vulnerable position.
>> tuckerman: Very little [control], ultimately the healthcare the surrogate is receiving is _her_ healthcare.
That means, if something goes wrong the surrogates are stuck with med bills too, in addition to the legal ones.
[1] "The Island" 2005, recommended viewing, the movie might be available on big tube.
> That means, if something goes wrong the surrogates are stuck with med bills too, in addition to the legal ones.
This is not true.
Our contract, which was extremely standard, made us assume all medical expenses related to the pregnancy, including any complications that could have occurred afterwards. If anything happened to her health insurance coverage we would have also had to pay for premiums for new coverage.
Good for you, but not all contracts are like that, as is the case in the orig article. I'm not concerned about individual cases but about systemic risks.
The original comment asked what is typical, I am commenting what is typical.
What you describe would be extremely atypical and I can’t imagine any lawyer representing a surrogate would allow that to stand. It’s also nearly universal for IPs to cover legal fees for the surrogate to have an independent representation.
California, as an example, has laws mandating that IPs and Surrogates have separate attorneys for the process. I think most supporters of surrogacy would approve of common sense laws like that everywhere but even without them it’s very standard.
> What you describe would be extremely atypical
Well, we're commenting on an article describing such a case and there's no study telling us that it's atypical.
> I can’t imagine any lawyer representing a surrogate would allow that to stand.
Well, I can and I'd rather nor leave it to the imagination.
I understand surrogate clients, but many of them don't seem to understand that taking a narrow, egoistical view and wanting all options available to them actually limits the pool of willing surrogates. One of the many cases where greed works against itself and needs correcting nudges from the law.
> how much control does someone typically have over a surrogate during the pregnancy
Very little, ultimately the healthcare the surrogate is receiving is _her_ healthcare.
> what are you supposed to do in the event a surrogate has irreparable harm
These things are spelled out in the contract that the IPs have with their surrogate. Both things you mention are specifically called in our contract and the agency/IPs usually have insurance to cover these cases.
Source: I had my son through surrogacy
I've made plenty of remarks already but this got me:
> [Bi's husband] blamed the hospital, not Smith, but told me that the litigation is “her grieving process.” He tried to stay out of the legal stuff so that Bi couldn’t blame him too.
How utterly fucking sociopathic do you have to be to sue (and not just sue, she's angling to try to have the surrogate charged with murder) as part of your grieving process. Fuck the single mom trying to help you, you don't care, as a multimillionaire VC.
Even her husband is scared, to the point he's on record as saying he doesn't want his wife blaming him for the surrogacy loss? There are a multitude of issues here.
> Next, Bi iMessaged a photo of Leon’s corpse to Smith’s 7-year-old son’s iPad.
Oh, this kind of fucking sociopath.
> Bi isn’t anti-surrogacy—in fact, she frequently advises other investors who are pursuing it and sends me links to startup after startup
Coming up next, the next unicorn, funded by this VC to help control every moment of your surrogate's life.
This is a really good read on this story: https://www.fridaythings.com/recent-posts/wired-surrogacy-ci...
> The couple hired a second surrogate to carry a fetus for them, this one a girl who’s now 11 months old. Bi characterized that pregnancy as easy and smooth to Nietfeld. In fact, the surrogate, Chelsea Sanabria, had gestational diabetes and both placenta previa and placenta accreta. During delivery, she hemorrhaged, losing 5.4 litres of blood. She needed an emergency hysterectomy to literally save her life. Imagine how little you have to care about another person to characterize that as ‘easy.’