9 comments

pennygadgetMarch 12, 2025

I did a bit of searching on Brizzi and found this article about the assholes who abandoned her:

US couple withdraws legal action against ABC over claim they abandoned surrogate child with a disability This article is more than 3 years old Australian court orders husband and wife to pay broadcaster’s legal costs after dropping defamation action over Foreign Correspondent program

A couple who claimed the ABC portrayed them as abandoning their surrogate child with a disability in Ukraine will have to pay the broadcaster’s legal costs after withdrawing their defamation case.

Matthew Etnyre and his wife Irmgard Pagan sued over a 2019 Foreign Correspondent episode titled Motherland and a website article titled Damaged babies and broken hearts: Ukraine’s commercial surrogacy industry leaves a trail of disasters.

The US citizens were said to have first engaged Biotexcom, a company providing surrogacy services, in about 2015 when Etnyre was aged 36 and his wife was 59.

"As the result of publication of the matters complained of, the applicants have been subjected to hatred, ridicule and contempt, and have suffered and continue to suffer, distress and damage to their reputations,” according to their statement of claim.

Justice Wendy Abraham in June ordered them to pay $100,000 within 28 days as security for the ABC’s legal costs.

The federal court proceedings would be stayed until the security was paid.

Their lawyer on Tuesday told the judge his clients were unable to raise the money and would not be continuing with the case, but asked they not be ordered to pay the ABC’s costs to date.

But Justice Abraham agreed with the ABC that there was no reason why the usual rule should not apply, and the party abandoning the case should foot the other side’s legal bill.

She had made the security order on the basis they were “impecunious”, resided outside the jurisdiction, had no assets in Australia and had admitted they would be unlikely to be able to pay any costs order if they lost their case.

In the statement of claim, they said the publications conveyed the defamatory meanings that Etnyre heartlessly abandoned a child, of which he was the biological father, around the time of birth, “because he did not like the child’s appearance”.

Pagan’s similar claim related to “a child whose birth was achieved for her by a surrogate mother”.

The ABC’s defence included a claim of “substantial truth” and refers to sworn statements made by the husband and wife in Puerto Rico.

In early 2016, they were informed the surrogate, who was impregnated with embryos created using Etnyre’s sperm, had given birth prematurely to twins at about 25 weeks gestation.

The male twin had died while the female, named Bridget Irmgard Etnyre-Pagan, had serious health complications, was hospitalised and required medical treatment for physical and mental impairments.

The ABC referred to other documents including a direction by the couple that medical treatment of Bridget be ceased so she could die.

Reference was made to medical opinions including one which said the baby was “totally physically and mentally disabled and with no chance of recovering”.

The ABC said since becoming aware that Bridget was alive, the couple didn’t go to Ukraine to see her, hadn’t organised for her to be transferred to the USA, or organised for her to be removed from a group children’s home to be cared for privately.

They hadn’t provided financially for her, nor given her any love, affection or attention.

They did engage Biotexcom for a second time and in 2017 were told a surrogate had given birth to twin boys, who now live with them in the USA.

As well as substantial truth, the ABC submitted the information in the publications were matters of proper and legitimate public interest.

I'm glad this documentary fucked them up. But I am enraged that the surrogacy agency allowed them to make more babies after they callously left the first one to rot and be cared for by Ukrainian taxpayers. They really will just hand children over to anyone who can pay the fee

nomenarewomen [OP]March 13, 2025

The US citizens were said to have first engaged Biotexcom, a company providing surrogacy services, in about 2015 when Etnyre was aged 36 and his wife was 59. "As the result of publication of the matters complained of, the applicants have been subjected to hatred, ridicule and contempt, and have suffered and continue to suffer, distress and damage to their reputations,” according to their statement of claim.

The utter selfishness of buying a baby at 59. Fuck that. And no, I don’t care about the contempt you received - you abandoned a disabled child in a country that has limited resources to help disabled children. A child who will now have attachment issues. Not to mention you buying a likely impoverished woman’s uterus and exposing her to the risks and trauma of pregnancy, childbirth and losing one child to still birth and one to surrogacy.

They did engage Biotexcom for a second time and in 2017 were told a surrogate had given birth to twin boys, who now live with them in the USA.

FUCK THAT. You don’t get to buy a baby just because you missed the boat on your fertile window. You’re in your sixties!!

pennygadgetMarch 13, 2025

Seriously, Even if they have money for Nannies, having a kid at that age is selfish. I'm in my late 30s, and I feel too old to be raising kids!

And even if they didn't want Brizzi, they could have brought her to the USA and put her in an institution. It would have still been an evil and shitty thing to do. But at least she wouldn't be a stateless ghost in a struggling, war torn country

Thank God she got adopted. Because its terrifying to imagine what life would have been like for her as a disabled adult with no legal citizenship anywhere in a country ravaged by war. Its appalling that the people who intentionally brought her into existence didn't give a damn about any of that. They left her to rot. And then they purchased two more kids like it was nothing.

Ukraine should ban surrogacy outright. But if they're going to keep it, they need to fix that citizenship issue for kids like Brizzi who get abandoned there by their buyers

pennygadgetMarch 12, 2025

Also, it seems that Brizzi is okay now. According to this article (the source isn't the best, but I see no reason for them to make this up), she was adopted by an American couple at the start of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. And she has been able to have contact with her birth mom (who moved to New York when the war started). Hopefully, her adoptive parents will keep Marina in her life as well.

nomenarewomen [OP]March 13, 2025

I really hope this is true. That poor child. I imagine there are some deep attachment wounds from her early years and from leaving that nurse she was close to.

pennygadgetMarch 12, 2025

Its strange that they disabled the comments. The comments were up when I first watched this a few years ago

This whole documentary is heartbreaking. But Brizzi's story (starting at around 9:30 in the video) made me cry. First her American buyers abandon her to live as a stateless ghost in Ukraine (Ukraine doesn't have birthright citizenship). And then the orphanage doesn't let her remain close to Marina (the woman who has loved her the longest)

Brizzi's story still haunts me years after I watched this documentary. I still wonder how she's doing sometimes. And I hope Marina found some way to remain in contact with her.

I also hope that there's a hell so that the rich Americans who intentionally created her just to doom her to this fate can roast in it!

At 21:30, the journalist contacts the assholes who abandoned Brizzi. But, of course, the cowards have nothing to say. They left their (presumably) biological daughter to rot in a place where she cannot even get proper citizenship. All because she had the audacity to be born disabled. Even though they could have afforded top of the line care for her. Surrogacy is bad enough. But to intentionally create a baby just to abandon her in a third world orphanage if she doesn't turn out "perfect"? Pure evil

nomenarewomen [OP]March 13, 2025

This whole documentary is heartbreaking.

It really is. For the abandoned children. For the abused gestational mothers. Just all round heartbreaking.

momofreyrellaMarch 12, 2025

Heart breaking

pennygadgetMarch 12, 2025

If it makes you feel better, things got better for Brizzi. And the assholes who abandoned her tried to sue the journalist for reputational damage and lost