NBC News99%
First person born through gestational surrogacy tells her story 40 years later 97%
4/17/2026, 11:54:42 PM
BS Summary: This video contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 29.1% saturation with 129 hits. Analysis detected 1,274 faulty-reasoning hits from 443 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 95% and a BS Rank of 97% (589 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 96.50% of the video peer group.
This week, Jill Bran turned 40, a birthday considered to be a milestone for many.
But it's also a celebration of a medical breakthrough.
Jill was the first baby in the world created through justational surrogacy.
She and her mother, Sandy, have never sat down on TV to share the story behind her birth until now.
>> When I was born, it's the first time in human history that a woman gave birth to a baby she had no genetic relationship to.
Her mom had her fallopian tubes removed and was told she could not carry a child.
But her parents went on to adopt two daughters and then got a new sense of hope in 1978 when the first IVF baby was born in England.
They decided to give it a shot and met with the pioneers of IVF, Dr. Patrick Steto and Dr. Robert Edwards.
And it worked.
>> The pregnancy was proceeding normally.
Then my uterus ruptured and so I had an emergency C-section and a hysterctomy and our baby Heather lived for 13 days and then she died.
And so we were devastated after that.
>> 3 years later and Jill's father Elliot, a cardiologist, had a remarkable idea.
What if doctors could retrieve Sandy's egg and create an embryo through IVF, but have another woman carry the pregnancy?
>> I said, I think that's crazy. what doctor would be willing to do this?
Well, he said, "We'll find a doctor.
We'll find a way."
>> They began calling dozens of doctors around the country, hearing no again and again.
Some doubted it was possible.
Others said it was not moral or legal until they reached the last doctor on their list, Wolf Uden, a reproductive endocrinologist based in Cleveland, who was willing to try.
And on the stormy day of April 13th, 1986, Jill was born.
What did your parents tell you growing up about your birth and the significance of it?
>> I mean, for the first kind of year of my life, there was, you know, there was a little bit of um publicity and a little bit of news around it.
Um, but then my my mom, you know, really wanted a private life.
She, you know, she always says like, I just wanted to enjoy you. I wanted to enjoy you and your sisters.
>> Since Jill's birth, thousands of babies have been born via gational surrogacy, according to the CDC.
Now, Sandy and Jill, who is a mom of three, are sharing their story to honor Elliot, who passed away last
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