Since the end of February we have been shown daily images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We see women and children who have sought refuge in neighboring countries, others protected in the depths of the subway and many civilians trying to defend themselves from the invader. But there is a more silent and private story, and that doesn’t make it less of an impact on us. This refers to the numerous children who have been born in Ukraine in a context of surrogacy and who have been forgotten there, unable to be picked up by their future parents.
In simple terms, there are altruistic (for example, between sisters or mother-daughter) or paid gestational carriers. In turn, they can donate their eggs (so, in addition to being a gestational carrier, the embryo is genetically related to her) or they can receive embryos that are not genetically related. This has allowed women without a uterus or with medical conditions that make pregnancy very risky, and men alone or with a same-sex partner, to make their desire to have a genetically related child come true.
A series of human rights violations caused some countries to close their borders for surrogacy agreements with foreigners, so Before the outbreak of the war, Ukraine concentrated 25% of surrogacy worldwide. Ukraine has a legal framework that recognizes those who requested the service as the legal parents of the child and is one of the few countries that allows foreigners to make these agreements. The cost of the program is estimated at US$60,000, which includes egg donation, assisted fertilization cycles and subsequent embryo transfer, until the birth of a child. As is often the case, many times the agencies in charge of the service keep a very high percentage of this payment.
In Ukraine there are now about 500 women with a surrogacy pregnancy in progress and an unknown number who have already given birth and have been unable to deliver the children to their parents, not counting the embryos waiting to be transferred.
For some, surrogacy arrangements, like other areas of people’s sexual and reproductive health, are essentially aspects of private life. Those who have this view maintain that surrogacy is an agreement between competent adults, who freely and voluntarily accept the conditions inherent in this type of treatment, for which the surrogate receives a fair payment that compensates for the inconvenience.
From my point of view, in the context of paid gestational carrier there is a certain risk of exploitation of vulnerable women, for whom there is not really a free choice. The evidence systematically shows that in these agreements there is no such “altruism” or “goodness” of those who agree to carry out a pregnancy to later deliver the newborn to those who hired her. Many women are left with no real choice when the alternative is not being able to feed their families. This is why all countries, just as India, Thailand and Nepal did at the time, should ban paid surrogacy, especially for foreigners, due to human rights considerations and as a way to protect the most vulnerable, the women and their children.
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