KYIV, Ukraine – After months of cowering in a basement to avoid shelling, a surrogate mother named Viktoria was able to deliver her family and unborn child she was carrying to foreign clients, avoiding from the fighting in northeastern Ukraine.
She said she was able to do so because her employer, a surrogacy agency, offered financial support and an apartment in the capital, Kyiv, to ensure the safety of her and the baby. . And though she was initially reluctant to leave her home, Kharkiv, even when hit by artillery attacks, is now happy to live in relative security.
“I wouldn’t have left if the clinic hadn’t convinced me,” she said.
Viktoria was one of hundreds of surrogate mothers who were seven months pregnant, fled as air raid sirens sounded, survived a bomb shelter, then fled ruined towns. to give birth to parents abroad.
Before the Russian invasion in February, Ukraine was the main provider of surrogacy services, one of the few countries that allowed foreign clients. After a spring break, surrogacy agencies are continuing their work, revitalizing an industry many childless people rely on but critics have said. Is called exploitation and that, in peacetime, was ethically and logistically complex.
The series of Russian missiles that hit Ukrainian cities last week underscored the dangerous environment in which the industry operates.
In interviews, dozens of surrogate mothers said that the extra financial support they received helped ensure their families’ survival by allowing them to leave besieged areas or frequently shelled. However, in some cases, the surrogacy industry has also exposed mothers to new dangers that they would not have to face while at home, like Russian checkpoints to leave the territory. invaded.
Viktoria, like other surrogate mothers, has agreed to be interviewed and photographed at a clinic in Kyiv, on condition that only her name be used. Some women have concerns about privacy, and others about security, for relatives who remain in Russian-occupied territory or for their relationship there.
Agencies are also adapting to the fight. Besides helping surrogates and their families move to safer cities, some have had to find ways to care for children as their biological parents struggle to overcome obstacles. afraid of war and pandemic to come to Ukraine. Svitlana Burkovska, owner of a small dealership, Ferta, has been bringing babies into her own home for months.
Fear that business will unravel – especially when Russia tried and failed to capture Kyiv in the early weeks of the war – proved to be overblown. Life in western and central Ukraine has largely stabilized despite fighting in the southern and eastern regions and the continued dangers of long-range missile attacks.
“We have not lost a single case,” said Ihor Pechenoha, medical director at BioTexCom, Ukraine’s largest surrogacy agency and clinic. “We tried to get all our surrogate mothers out of the occupied and shelled place.”
But for months, the women who thought they would make money by giving their lives had to first protect their own.
Outside the capital, surrogate mothers slept in cars by the dusty road while escaping from occupied territory, facing interrogation by Russian soldiers and living in bunkers below. ground.
During the first month of the war, 19 children were born to replace mothers for an already established agency marooned in a nursery in the basement in Kyiv. For weeks and months, it was difficult or impossible for biological parents to contact their children in Ukraine, but by August all the babies had gone home.
Albert Tochylovsky, director of BioTexCom, says the fight has not diminished the allure of surrogacy for couples desperate to have children. “They’re in a hurry,” he said. “To explain,” We have a war going on, “didn’t work.”
Before Russia launched a full-blown invasion, BioTexCom was feeding about 50 women a month. Since the beginning of June, the company has initiated at least 15 new pregnancies.
With the money the business brought in, Tochylovsky said, surrogate mothers were moved from frontline towns and Russian-occupied regions to safer places, like Kyiv.
Many women in the business describe surrogacy as “work” – a term doctors say to avoid emotional attachment to the babies they carry. On a recent morning in Kyiv, about 20 women lined up at the company’s front desk to check in or prepare for pregnancy.
They all have war stories to tell, of calls for closeness and traumatic losses. All, including Viktoria – who is carrying babies for Chinese clients, like many surrogate mothers in Ukraine – say they are motivated by money, love for their own children and a desire to keep them. Be safe.
Surrogacy is banned in many countries for a variety of reasons, including criticism leaving poor women vulnerable to exploitation by clients and agencies. Advocates of surrogacy, in which surrogate mothers undergo in vitro fertilization childbearing of clients who are unable to have children on their own, says the method is invaluable to such couples and provides a life-changing sum for agents.
“I do it for the money, but why not?” Olha, 28, who started a new surrogate this summer. “I am in good health and can help people who have money” and want to have children, she added.
Before the war, business thrived in Ukraine, where surrogate mothers typically earned around $20,000 for each child they gave birth to. The war made financial security even more urgent.
A 30-year-old surrogate mother, who declined to be named because she had been evacuated from Melitopol in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine and feared she might be the target of revenge, said she believes the job has brought her family. go out. “With the help of surrogacy,” she says, “I saved my family.”
Due to a nine-month lead time, agencies are unable to make quick decisions on whether to resume or suspend business following developments such as last week’s series of rocket attacks and untimely pregnant mothers. may move to jurisdictions outside of Ukraine that do not recognize guardianship for surrogate biological parents. births.
War created many new puzzles for women, customers and healthcare workers. Viktoria and her family face such a dilemma: Her paycheck will keep them alive, but it’s still unclear where they should go once she recovers from a C-section. the family remained in the apartment rented by the clinic in Kyiv; Her hometown, Kharkiv, is still under regular shelling.
For many surrogate mothers, the question is where to give birth. The threats included not only fighting, but also how agencies set up by the Russian occupation government would handle a surrogate birth.
An agent named Nadia lived in a village in Russian-occupied territory, where there was no danger of shelling. But she decided to evacuate to Ukrainian-controlled territory to give birth, fearing that her biological parents would be stripped of their guardianship and cost her fees.
She spent two days with her husband and 11-year-old daughter sleeping in an occasional roadside car waiting to cross the front lines.
Mrs. Burkovska, the small business owner, got into a fight with two trapped pregnant children in her care. Contrary to most surrogacy agencies, she takes care of babies in her own home before their biological parents pick them up. For a time, she had to take shelter in a basement with her newborn babies, partner, and children.
As more babies arrived in the first months of the war, she brought with her 7 infants whose biological parents were unable to retrieve them immediately, as traveling to wartime Ukraine became difficult. difficult and due to some remaining coronavirus restrictions, like China’s, caused delays.
Burkovska’s stepchildren helped take care of the newborns until their parents could receive them. By August, most of the parents had come to pick up their children.
Zhang Zong, a China customer of BioTexCom, was one of those who struggled to get to Kyiv through travel delays. He said the wait had been horrible. “I was very worried because of the war,” he said.
Meeting his 6-month-old son again, he said he was both nervous and a little strange. “I was so excited when they let me hug him,” Mr. Zhang said. “He’s been here a long time and everyone’s hugging him, everyone likes him, and I’m not so special.”
But he added that’s just for now. “When he grows up,” said Mr. Zhang, “I can tell him this story.”
