CHILDREN BORN THROUGH SURROGACY IN UKRAINE: VICTIMS TWICE

Considered as the cradle of surrogacy, today Ukraine is unfortunately theater of war. What will it be of those children already commissioned, just born or about to?

One day last week, a pregnant surrogate mother in Ukraine called a lawyer with an anomalous request: If war broke out, could the biological parents of the unborn child be able to force her to leave the country? They wanted her to go to nearby Georgia for the rest of her pregnancy. However, she would not leave her children.

Sergeiy Antonov, a Ukrainian lawyer, said he was contacted by at least two couples with the same request. “Surrogate mothers – he explained – have their own children and cannot leave them to move to another country.” The contracts they have signed, however, could foresee this.

Let’s go back to the initial question: what will happen to children already born and waiting to be collected?
You will probably remember what happened during the 2020 lockdown, when the specialised centre for assisted procreation Biotexcom had literally parked over 60 children born from surrogacy in the Hotel Venezia in Kiev, used as an extempiraneous nursery, awaiting the release for international arrivals of the client couples.

But now it is war and entire families are trying to leave the country, mothers and fathers are trying to bring their children to safety.
But what will it be of these children if the commissioning parents cannot reach them?

Don’t worry, Biotexcom guarantees their safety and business even in war. It’s of the day before the Russian attack a video published by the company itself of a fallout shelter where children would have been kept in case of war. The clinic ensured that surrogacy activities in Ukraine continued regularly, “there is no reason to panic, neither for Ukrainians nor for foreigners here”. The clinic also said it was “very grateful to those who are confirming embryo transfers” in Kiev.

An unprecedented violence that of surrogacy, which deeply wounds not only the mother, who is exploited and bought, but also the child, the subject of a contract that will deprive him forever of his fundamental right to remain with both biological parents.
Today this crime takes on even more tragic aspects.