Surrogacy in Ukraine - Times article

Comment by Martha Gill in the Times:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d69db016-9e4c-11ec-b38e-10b333e9179b?shareToken=50cef3ebf5077d6b40cd69adf637962f

I've got a feeling Jennifer Lahl has been doing a study but I don't think she's published it yet @Beowulfa

A slight digression but I do wonder how this woman is doing. I just can't make the mental leap from the grief of a still birth (plus a miscarriage) to having a baby to give away. I was utterly shocked to see she had been encouraged to go through with being a surrogate mother. Also a high risk pregnancy for the NHS to manage but that's another story.
I'm sure there must be a lot to unpick that wasn't explored by her counsellor.

I wonder if she is busy trying to get pregnant again with another baby for herself - apparently that is quite common - those empty arms need filling.

'Surrogacy is absolutely what I want to do' www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58639955

I'm guessing there's no interest in studies of the mental health impacts on women who've acted as commercial surrogates?

Yes @Clymene and only four weeks after their boy was born. It's so much more convenient using a surrogate because you don't have to worry about boring shit like postnatal recovery.

And they are not expecting a baby girl this month. The woman they have paid is expecting a baby girl.

The allure of the two-for deal is strong - it's just like when I end up with a second pack of sausages that I don't actually need. What's that you say? That the lives of babies and mothers shouldn't be compared to supermarket BOGOFs?

I'm sorry I find this absolutely sick

I've wondered about that too @Valleyofthedollymix

It's questionable if anyone is doing the research - it's only surrogates after all.

But we know that donor conceived pregnancies are higher risk - that goes for women having IVF and using a donor egg for their own purposes as well as for surrogacy. It appears that there is a sort of host body reaction, similar to transplants, so the women have to take drugs for the first three months or so to prevent their body rejecting the fetus. I should imagine that the risks of a reaction or a more severe reaction would quite possibly be raised in this situation.

I know @Valleyofthedollymix !

How is it these people do so much research into the type of woman they want to be the provider of the genetic material to make the baby, seeking out the best fertility doctors and choosing the surrogate mothers but no one tells them that a twin pregnancy is inherently more dangerous, They are six times more likely to deliver prematurely, with the risks to the babies that that involves, without checking I'm pretty sure I read that multiple birth is the commonest cause of cerebral palsy, presumably due to the association of premature birth.
And the risk of the woman dying is 2.5 times higher along with other risks such as raised blood pressure and pre-eclampsia , which of course increases the risk of premature delivery.
Don't these expensive fertility doctors bother to tell clients about these risks?

I know there are enormous additional risks in a twin pregnancy over a single one, but are there further ones if the embryos have different paternity? So the surrogate mother would be carrying (nay growing, nurturing, giving life to) babies that were not only genetically unrelated to her, but half siblings to each other.

And here British couples who have engaged the services of a Ukrainian woman to breed a baby for them are asking for the women to be brought to the U.K. to have their babies.

‘Bring our unborn British babies home from Ukrainian surrogate mothers’.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bring-our-unborn-british-babies-home-from-ukrainian-surrogate-mothers-x6v22cshdd_

At one level, if they could bring their families too, I'd be happy to see them afforded safety. But how can it not be people trafficking? And frankly, modern day slavery, how can anyone see this as anything else, to bring a woman to the U.K. to deliver the baby you ordered.
Like buying and importing a brood mare already in foal to a sought after stallion.

From that article:

They aimed to have the eggs fertilised by both men’s sperm so they could implant two embryos and each have a biological child. (“We wanted twins — a boy and a girl,” Bousis continues.)

Absolutely no consumer culture going on there at all, no siree.

The Times carried two articles on Sunday, starting with this sickening uncritical view of surrogacy.

"Kim Kardashian tried to give us her surrogate"

Have you ever read anything more mindless? It sums up everything you need to know about celebrity use of surrogate mothers.

Peter Dundas: ‘People think, oh, same-sex couples — they buy a baby’.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/78526d60-9944-11ec-84fe-a2a0efa555d1?shareToken=47143fa1e562d9b610f3a3ad1140f88dd_

Short article with interview with Jennifer Lahl.
The situation now in Ukraine is appalling and desperately sad for all Ukrainians.

With 200 surrogate births due in the next two to three months these women are in a terrible situation as they will have families and the priority now must be for their own safety and that of their families.
If they evacuate to a neighbouring country the surrogacy probably won't be recognised depending on the laws of the country they are in eg Poland where surrogacy is illegal.

wng.org/roundups/wombs-for-rent-in-wartime-1646499722

Like you, I fear for all the women @FannyCann (I hear the pimps are outside the train stations to entice women into prostitution upon their arrival and escape out of Ukraine), but for the women who aren't trying to add to their families and were simply doing it for money, for those women I feel especially desperate.

If the MOD (in a now deleted tweet) want to focus on a tiny minority in society the day after Russia invaded I'll be damned if I can't focus on the women I feel for most.

I don't think maternity services should be prioritised in any way, over and above normal triage, with medical need and urgent treatment, but undoubtedly this is one area which will be swiftly put aside and women will be left to labour alone, without pain relief and in many cases I imagine completely alone, where their husbands and partners are forced to fight.

If I was being hyperbolic I would suggest that governments who allow this to continue (and especially those who forget to rescue the women too) have blood on their hands.

I hope the baby buyers can't sleep at night and not just because they have a newborn baby in the house, screaming for the comfort of his or her, of their, mother.

That's a great letter @OhHolyJesus

The whole situation is appalling and I feel desperately sad for the people of Ukraine.

I see in a separate report that a maternity ward has been converted to a field hospital. I hope all the heavily pregnant women have been able to make their escape.

Re the report on the "Irish" babies, I note there was a set of twins. Good chance that mother needed a caesarean. I hope she's recovering somewhere safe.

Absolutely sickening. With all of the fluffy language, I sometimes forget the reality of surrogacy - literally paying a poor woman to carry and birth a child for a wealth woman. Truly dystopian. And yet her we are.

Ireland is heavily connected to Ukraine and here again, there is no mention of what happens to the Surrogate mother.

Irish babies born in Kyiv to surrogate mothers are evacuated amid fighting - Independent.iee_

Irish babies? Pretty sure they have Ukrainian birth certificates...

Minister Helen McEntee is leading the committee looking at international surrogacy and Stop Surrogacy Now U.K. spoke about this - here is the letter they sent.

twitter.com/wombsnotforrent/status/1497945858746236935?s=21

I fear we are not one step forward from the Magdalene Laundries, we have just replaced one set of male, misogynistic, overlords with another.

I don't really understand this comment re male overlords - Irish women use surrogacy as an option as well as Irish men.

the parents look like they are 55 wtf it definitely wasn't her egg!!!
Egg freezing has been an option for women for quite some time now. We have no idea if it was her egg or not. (I'm not saying I agree with surrogacy btw).

I note from a comment above that Denmark ban surrogacy under people trafficking laws. This is something that should be the case everywhere.

Just looked at the baby Luke story , the parents look like they are 55 wtf it definitely wasn't her egg!!! Highly selfish and entitled couple, they don't mention the birth mother once. Horrible countries need to ban international surrogacy and make it impossible to be granted a parental order nobody has the right to buy a womb.

Anasgirl I agree!

To-day I listened to an interview with Leo Varadkar, where he spoke of Irish children stuck in Ukraine. The interviewer (Pat Kenny) never expanded to ask how there were Irish children in Ukraine who needed embassy help to get out (that is why we are keeping the Russian Ambassador in Ireland apparently!!), but no mention of their mothers. Of course, Varadkar is part of that clique that support the buying of children for people who "want" them. And the use of women as cattle.

I cannot get my head around the total lack of critical thinking in Ireland re surrogacy, and if I see or hear that Senator woman on about it again, I will scream. Between this and the GRA, I fear we are not one step forward from the Magdalene Laundries, we have just replaced one set of male, misogynistic, overlords with another.

Putin invaded on Tues 22nd...the staff at the clinic didn't think, hold on, shouldn't we maybe stop getting women pregnant as we enter a very real and frightening situation where being pregnant wouldn't be a good idea?

Actually I would guess that the staff did think of this but the bosses just see dollar signs and told them to continue as business as usual.

I genuinely hope that the majority of those embryos failed to implant so the women involved don't have to experience morning sickness, tiredness and all the other early signs of pregnancy whilst trying to flee a war zone.

If these women remain and can't leave their homes they may struggle for basic supplies let alone help with a miscarriage, possibly due to the cortisol levels in their blood.

Just horrific. Women are just a collection of useful body parts at times. This really shows up the reality of surrogacy in Ukraine. The brokers should be ashamed but I doubt it even registers.