Olivia Maurel
Olivia Maurel is a French-American author, international speaker, and spokesperson for the Declaration of Casablanca, a coalition of experts advocating for the universal abolition of surrogacy.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky through a commercial surrogacy arrangement, Olivia spent much of her childhood sensing that something about her origins had been hidden from her. At seventeen, she discovered she had been born through surrogacy. Years later, after taking a DNA test, she reconnected with her biological family and eventually with the woman who carried and gave birth to her. That experience profoundly reshaped her understanding of identity, motherhood, separation, and belonging.
Today, Olivia is one of the first internationally recognized adults born through surrogacy to publicly speak about the lived experience of being intentionally separated from one’s birth mother. Her work focuses on the human rights implications of surrogacy, the commodification of women’s bodies and children, and the psychological consequences of reproductive separation.
She has spoken before the United Nations, the European Parliament, and numerous national institutions and universities across Europe and Latin America. Her advocacy has contributed to growing international debate surrounding surrogacy, children’s rights, and reproductive markets.
Her memoir, In Search of My Mother, intertwines personal testimony with ethical and political reflection. Through her own story, marked by identity struggles, addiction, trauma, motherhood, and healing, Olivia offers a rare perspective from the child at the center of the surrogacy debate.
She lives in France with her husband and their three children.
Ebook will be available on publication date
Olivia Maurel
Translated from French by Jane Roffe
Olivia Maurel is 35 years old, married and mother to three children.
She was ‘made to order’ for a wealthy French couple; born to a surrogate mother in Kentucky, USA. She did not know about the circumstances of her birth until she was 30 years old when a DNA Ancestry test revealed US relatives and no French genetic heritage. Surrogacy is a practice in which a woman agrees to carry a child for another person (or couple) and then has the baby taken away from her at birth. She may be paid for this, or not.
In Search of My Mother is Olivia Maurel’s autobiography. She looks back at her childhood lived between France and the USA. In spite of her affluent lifestyle, she felt lonely, not belonging and missing a spiritual connection to her mother. Her trauma led to excessive drinking and drugtaking; she was raped and had a painful pill abortion. It was only when she met her husband that her life became more stable and happier. But dark feelings never completely left her.
This changed abruptly when the DNA test revealed her origins. Olivia Maurel reveals the joys and difficulties of getting in touch with her mother and half-siblings.
Drawing on her own experience, Olivia Maurel has become a fierce abolitionist. She now calls surrogacy the objectification of women's bodies, the deprivation of surrogate mothers’ freedom, and the falsification of their consent. Surrogacy also involves high-risk pregnancies and the contractual purchase of a child.
As the spokeswoman for The Declaration of Casablanca – an international group wanting to abolish all forms of surrogacy globally – Olivia travels the world in pursuit of this task. In Search of My Mother is a powerful and moving testimony to the misery surrogacy creates for the children born in this unscrupulous way. Surrogacy is a human rights violation of women and children that needs to be stopped.
7 JULY 2026 | 9781922964380 | Paperback | 152 × 228 mm | 204 pages