Surrogacy in Ukraine - Times article

So much information from the speaker - she really knows her stuff! The surrogacy industry can't claim to care about women when they implanted embryos in them in the middle of a war!!!

Short speech here from Posie Parker's meeting last weekend at Speaker's Corner - Lexi from Stop Surrogacy now.

God It's awful reading that @OhHolyJesus
I know when they embarked on the surrogacy they couldn't have predicted war breaking out exactly when the baby was due. And perhaps, once they were in that situation there was no other alternative to what they did, pleading for induction, taking the baby from hospital and rushing for the border. But it all certainly highlights western entitlement. The surrogate mother having no say over her body as the baby buyers demand she be delivered early. The nurses doing their best for the baby in their care as the buyers know better and run from the hospital with her. Exposing a new baby to such a perilous journey (not withstanding the obvious dangers of doing nothing). The taxi driver, paid to drive them to the border as his hysterical wife calls repeatedly needing him home with her (presumably). The thousands of Ukrainians queueing at the border as they take up the guards time, demanding special treatment and eventually getting waved through.
And finally the desperate texts from the surrogate mother still recovering from the birth. I wonder what sort of delivery she had, and what is happening with her family.

I would feel sick with guilt if I were them.

It's bad enough, for us here, living our lives, I was watching the news and feeling so guilty - planning an annual outing this weekend, pottering about the house, cooking supper, all those things the people of Ukraine suddenly can't do. Anyway, I'm off to make a donation to JK Rowling's Lumos appeal now. It's the least small thing I can do.

Sorry to keep on posting but I keep finding articles that are worthy of sharing.

Here the commissioning couple push doctors for an early induction so they can get the baby out, then get out of Ukraine, ignoring medical advice:

"They knew they had to move fast to secure her travel documents. Without a birth certificate, the couple wouldn’t be able to legally take her out the country. Also, Vivian wasn’t eating well, so the couple had to hunt down alternate baby formulas to assure she was medically stable. The whole time, the specter of imminent war loomed.

After waking up to the sound of explosions Thursday morning, the Boeckmanns knew it was time to leave. They had Vivian’s birth certificate. But they didn’t have the doctor’s discharge order.
“No, you can’t leave without the doctor seeing the baby,” the nurses said.
“The baby is OK,” Jessie said. Anxious, she knew they had to get out soon.
After 30 minutes of back-and-forth, the couple and Vivian left despite the nurses’ objections."

www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-28/costa-mesa-couple-barely-escape-ukraine-with-days-old-newborn

The 'surrogate' birth mother at least gets a name and it ends with

"The couple know they are lucky to have gotten out of Ukraine, and said that their hearts break for the Ukrainian people — thousands of whom have taken up arms to resist the incoming Russianss_ — and others who remain in the war-torn country.
On Monday, Jessie received a text from Lilya.
“We are being shot very hard. We are constantly afraid,” the text read. “We are afraid of what will happen next.”

But they had an ordeal escaping so it's all ok - I hope that Baby Vivianne grows up and reads this and learns how the parents who raised her left her mother behind to take her chances.

Thanks @Bergamotte, I'll check this out.

I saw this at the weekend. Celebrity (I say celebrity, she was Miss World in 2003, I think she is an 'influencer' and does something with Waterwipes...anyway) Roseanne Davison shared her concern for the birth mother of daughter Sophia

""I've been in touch today with our lovely surrogate who is also praying for peace and hoping to stay safe with her family.”

"Sending so much love to the people of Ukraine and everyone affected by this,” she added."

Notice how the article quickly focuses on her own life and experience and how there isn't a plan to offer refuge for the surrogate mother and her family at their home in Ireland. Sending love but not help.

www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/rosanna-davison-shares-worry-for-her-ukrainian-surrogate-41384487.html

Sorry, @OhHolyJesus it was a radio documentary so possibly not very accessible
www.dr.dk/lyd/p1/baby-pa-bestilling "Babies for order"

I think this might be the video mentioned in the documentary- put out by the surrogacy agency as good PR and hoping that countries would relax rules to let commissioning parents pick up the babies. But seeing the room full of cots shocked many people. (it's the same agency as in the BBC report posted by Slothtoes )

Sorry, forgot the link. Yet another article that barely mentions the women who actually give birth and nothing by sympathy for the people paying them to do so.

(I realise Georgie Crawford had breast cancer. So do lots of women. She had one child and wanted another but couldn't. So do lots of families.)

www.image.ie/self/georgie-crawford-makes-heartbreaking-decision-not-to-proceed-with-ukraine-surrogacy-at-this-time-395284

Georgie Crawford (no I hadn't either) has had to cancel her order for another surrogate born baby, a sibling for the last baby she bought from Ukraine:

Unfortunately, things did not play out as they’d hoped and the Crawfords have had to make the unimaginably difficult decision not to proceed with that surrogacy. Due to undergo the process of embryo transfer this week, the couple were forced to put things on pause in light of the current situation in Ukraine. Their match didn’t want to wait, however, and has chosen to continue the process with another family.
“Over the past two weeks, we have watched the news nonstop and have been on an emotional rollercoaster, to say the least,” Georgie shared during the week. “Our embryo transfer was due to take place yesterday [Monday] but we felt like it was best for our family to ask our clinic if we could pause the process until things (hopefully) settle.
“Our clinic were so supportive but unfortunately our surrogate mother felt like she had to keep going in the process and was to be put forward to another family who felt ready to proceed.
“When I say unfortunate, I mean unfortunate for us. I have no doubt in my mind that our surrogate made the best decision for her family. I thought about her all day long yesterday and have nothing but love in my heart for her.”

With all that move maybe she could help her and her family escape perhaps?

A contract should have been signed so maybe they are able to pull out prior to implantation with no legal repercussions or loss of money, leaving the woman with the need to earn money as well as the physical preparation of implantation. She then had to be quickly 're-matched' further down the conveyor belt to another commissioning couple (there is no shortage of people willing to exploit her). Georgie and her husband cancelled the appointment on Monday this week.

Russia invaded the next day.

@VaddaABeetch - I’m 52, I remember all that.

Same here. I'm 57 and the magdalene laundry just beside my grandparents' house was a part of my childhood. We used to get chased off by the nuns if we went into their grounds. They were scary women.

@Bergamotte is there any chance you can find a link to this documentary or remember the name? I'd be interested in watching that.

Another issue is whether and when the commissioning parents will collect the baby. Let's be honest, this invasion is unlikely to end overnight, Ukrainian citizens could have months of this horror. Babies who are not collected at newborn stage will quickly grow and there were comments during the pandemic travel restrictions where I think it was a commissioning mother said something about the newborn phase being ruined for her.

@OchonAgusOchonOh I’m 52, I remember all that.

Is their some collective national attempt to forget the forced adoptions the policing of women bodies, to forget the church abuse of kids.

We’ve bought into the church of gender & wokeness where men In dresses get to lecture the population with a final say on well everything & we snatch babies from their mothers to give them to more ‘worthy’ parents Have we learned nothing?

I’m so tired & angry with this shite sorry if I’m incomprehensible.

I'm appalled, but sadly not surprised, about how the commissioning parents clearly think about the surrogate mothers. An incubator which has to be kept physically safe until they can get hold of her precious cargo. Who cares about her mental health, her family or other responsibilities, what happens to her after the birth?

A while ago a listened to a documentary about a journalist travelling with a Danish couple, who had ordered a baby in Kiev before the pandemic. Surrogacy is illegal under Denmark's people trafficking laws, so they had planned to travel to Ukraine in time for the birth, then when they got back home the father would register the birth and claim his wife had given birth to the baby. But Covid hit and the world went into lockdown, so they weren't able to get to Ukraine until a few weeks after the birth.
That was bad enough to hear about, but at least "only" problems (in addition to normal surrogacy horrors) were the emotional damage to the infant of being left in a cot unable to bond to a parent for the first days of its life; and arguments about money since the contract had changed.
I can't imagine giving birth in the middle of an invasion.
I mean obviously there will always be pregnant in any city which gets attacked, and it is always awful for them, but this just feels so unnecessary. And the contrast of the commissioning parents' desperation to get "their" baby, with their complete disregard for the living, breathing, HUMAN woman who is bringing it into the world, is gross.

@OhHolyJesus

Bloody hell, how do that couple sleep at night? Your child's mother is still in danger... Hello?! No mention of her of course, they're the stars of the show.

So selfish - I have money. I don't need to adhere to biology like everyone else, I can just hire someone else to birth a baby for me

[quote VaddaABeetch]@OchonAgusOchonOh the similarities to the forced adoptions & mother & baby homes seems to be lost my Irish generation, 40s/50s.

I heard somebody say ahh that’s because we’re rich people now. Different rules (not without irony).

My mother & her friends however were appalled when they heard of surrogacy.[/quote]
The magdalene laundries aren't gone that long. The last one closed in 1996. I assume there weren't too many new victims for at least a decade or two before that.

My Grandparents lived close to one and the women and girls who escaped often ended up hiding in one of their sheds. They would feed and hide them until the hunt died down and then helped them get out of town on a bus or get a lift from a sympathetic truck driver.

@OchonAgusOchonOh the similarities to the forced adoptions & mother & baby homes seems to be lost my Irish generation, 40s/50s.

I heard somebody say ahh that’s because we’re rich people now. Different rules (not without irony).

My mother & her friends however were appalled when they heard of surrogacy.

I find attitudes here in Ireland to this whole process really weird. Everyone deplores the actions of the Catholic Church selling babies in the past, but yet it's OK to rent a womb and buy a baby as the surrogate is doing it of their own choice.

Similar attitudes were evident at the height of international adoptions. It was all about the wants of the prospective parents, rather than the needs of the child or their mother.

A relative of mine adopted internationally and basically said he didn't want to know anything about how their child came up for adoption as you hear terrible stories about women being coerced, babies being abducted etc in order to supply the adoption market.

NC for this. I have an Irish friend who is using a surrogate in Ukraine. I won't go into details here but I'm utterly sickened at the elaborate plan she is creating to get the baby out. It's entirely about them and all concern for the mother appears to have gone.

I can't imagine dealing with the post-partum mayhem of engorged breasts, bleeding, sore stitches, hormonal ups and downs and being stuck in the middle of a war zone minus the baby you've carried for 9 months. I hope that every time the 'purchasers' sniff that beautiful, newborn head, they spare a thought for the woman who gave life to and kept that baby safe and nourished for nine months within her body.

I’m heartened to see the comments on the Kerry couple. All I’m hearing here in Ireland is stunning & brave & that the surrogate mother is not the ‘real’ mother.

Perhaps the tide is turning here in Ireland.

rp-online.de/nrw/panorama/deutsche-sitzen-in-der-ukraine-fest-paar-mit-baby-aus-heinsberg_aid-66620347

Also reported in german media, but absolutely no mention of the surrogates - just that the couple are legally registered as the parents and that they cant get out of the country because important papers are missing (i guess birth certificates?) and they dont want to travel to the border for fear that the man will be accosted by the Russians.
I suppose we are meant to feel massive sympathy and yet the actual mother is probably in a subway bunker right now with limited medical care.

Timely reminder of the Law Commission's plans for surrogacy in the U.K. from Catherine Bennett.

twitter.com/canfordheather/status/1497859084669923330?s=21

I've been a bit on the fence about surrogacy tbh, didn't know much about it so wasn't sure what I thought. This thread has just tipped me violently off my fence! Of course it's wrong, those poor women and their families. No one has the right to buy a baby.

I came on to speak about this story of baby Luke and the terrifying zero mention of his mother who was presumably left in Ukraine bleeding in a war zone without the child she has carried. And so much more dystopian horrors I have read in this thread. How horrifying.