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’ 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.
JULY 2026 | 9781922964380 | Paperback | ca. 250 pages
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’ 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.
JULY 2026 | 9781922964380 | Paperback | ca. 250 pages
