The selfishness of these commissioning couples is palpable. I wonder whether this really is the best way to reassure people that surrogacy isn't the trade of babies, do they think that the majority of people hearing about this and about what is happening in Ukraine are going to give their sympathies to people who have embryos 'trapped' in Ukraine over the actual live people? Men and boys fighting and women and children fleeing, but oh those poor embryos...
Article here on the companies conducting this abhorrent practice and also with an interview of a nanny who looks after the babies; with two sons and a husband fighting, she refuses to leave her colleagues and the babies.
"The business has thrived in Ukraine largely because of poverty. Surrogate mothers here typically earn about $15,000 per child. Ukraine does not allow surrogacy for same-sex couples, or for couples who wish to choose the sex of their child.
Fourteen companies offer the service in Ukraine, including BioTexCom, the largest, which is running the basement nursery in Kyiv."
The CEO of BioTexCom wonders if he made the wrong choice but later they do quote surrogate mothers
"Anna, an expectant surrogate mother who, like others quoted, spoke on the condition that only her first name be used, has not left Kyiv because her husband enlisted as a volunteer soldier and she wants to be near him. She is also caring for her own son, she said by telephone.
“I really don’t want to leave him behind. But I have to save two lives: one inside me and the other nine years old and running around” their apartment, she said.
The biological parents of the baby she is carrying are from China, she said. While they have a stake in her safety, they cannot now make decisions about her movements.
“I hope the war will end by the time I need to give birth,” she said...
Ania, 26, who has two children of her own, is pregnant as a surrogate mother for the second time. The first time, the baby could not immediately be picked up by clients because of Covid-19 travel restrictions. “I’m just not lucky,” she said.
She is now 31 weeks pregnant with twins and living near Lviv after fleeing Kamianske, in central Ukraine. Her clients, she said, want her to move to Western Europe. But she is afraid to do so, because she may be required to register as the babies’ legal guardian under the less permissive surrogacy laws that prevail outside Ukraine."
And the commissioning couple for the baby Ania is carrying moved to be with her but...
In November, as alarms were being raised about the possibility of war in Ukraine, Frederic insisted that the surrogacy agency let him contact Ania directly. He and his wife went to Ukraine, and now live together near Lviv with Ania, her husband and her two children.
“We feel very lonely in this process,” Frederic said. One of their many problems is that all the documents proving that he and his wife are the twins’ genetic parents were left behind in Kyiv.
“Have you heard of any family with the same problem as ours?” he asked.
medicalmarketnews.com/2022/03/13/in-a-kyiv-basement-19-surrogate-babies-are-trapped-by-war-but-kept-alive-by-nannies/