Surrogacy in Ukraine - Times article

[quote OhHolyJesus]The commissioning parents may regret being so public about the purchase of a baby from a woman now left in Ukraine.

twitter.com/irishexaminer/status/1497185860730634244?s=21[/quote]

From an update from HeyReprotech dated February 21st they were pretty much carrying on as normal. There absolutely will be women in the middle of an egg collection cycle or newly implanted with an embryo.

You are correct about contracts @C8H10N4O2 under normal circumstances, however I imagine all that has flown out of the window with the first Russian bomb. Citizens of Ukraine are now fighting for survival. For women newly pregnant or heavily pregnant with a paying customer's baby the landscape has changed. In late pregnancy there isn't much option other than to find a safe place to deliver. Whether a bomb shelter meets the definition of a safe place to have a baby is another matter, given the lack of availability emergency treatment.
Crossing the border to Poland will be tricky as they do not recognise surrogacy so the woman may be left with the baby unless she does a runner from the hospital. She will also have her family and children to worry about. In early pregnancy I would definitely be looking at means of procuring an abortion. Again, Poland is not a good place to be as they have all but banned abortion.

Here is an email update from HeyReprotech, a newsletter I subscribe to.

What about surrogates mid-process?

The day after the war started, I began to wonder what was happening with surrogates who were mid-process.
Surrogacy requires that you take hormones for about two weeks** to thicken the uterine lining, so that an embryo can implant and thrive there. Some women may have just started on hormones. Others have had embryos recently transferred. Still others might be having pregnancy complications or be nearing the birth. Is there care available?
I also started thinking about the many Ukrainian women who act as egg donors. At the very end of donation, a woman takes a shot that causes the eggs to ripen. They have to be retrieved within about 36 hours. Were there women in Kyiv who were scheduled to do retrievals that Thursday morning? If so, were retrievals done? If not, what happens?
I emailed all the clinics I'd been in touch with to ask. I wanted to know if they opened at all, and if they did procedures of any kind.
I did not hear back. The situation continued to worsen in Kyiv yesterday.
This morning, I got an email from Diana Donskaya, head of international marketing at Adonis, a large clinic and surrogacy provider, based in Kyiv:
Alison, my busyness is to protect my family and my country against russian aggression and artillery shelling and rockets from russia
War is our reality today. Try to understand

The missing full stop was how it was in the email, I don't know if that is how it was sent by Diana but I am picturing a woman to frantic to bother with the niceties of punctuation.

It has raised questions for me however. Does anyone here know what happens to a woman whose ovaries have been heavily overstimulated to produce dozens of eggs if the egg collection doesn't proceed?
In the U.K. the NHS picks up the complications from the fertility industry - my hospital had 24 admissions for OHSS, with at least one that I know of ending up in icu in 2019. I've no idea what happens in such cases in Ukraine in normal times and now the hospitals will be prioritising treatment of the wounded and preparing for more wounded. Dealing with the fall out of the fertility industry won't be popular priority.

Where the law doesn't allow for the procuring partner to "own" the woman's body during the contract then massive financial penalties such as having to pay all the medical and legal bills are put in place making "choice" a meaningless concept to the usually lower income women used as surrogates.

Shameful. When will this grim practice of renting wombs be outlawed?

The rest will be dealing with injuries of war. All 'non-essential' medical treatment will be closed.

When safe, affordable abortion isn't available women do take things into their own hands and I'm sure some women who are pregnant ( under surrogacy or not) will miscarry from the stress.

It is truly a desperate situation and highlights, again, how women are exploited through surrogacy. I thought Covid was enough of a warning, apparently not.

The commissioning parents may regret being so public about the purchase of a baby from a woman now left in Ukraine.

twitter.com/irishexaminer/status/1497185860730634244?s=21

If I was a surrogate in Ukraine with a, say, 8 week pregnancy I’d be seeking a medical termination. There’s no way I’d be parted from my own kids or contemplating going to term in a conflict zone with medical services in free fall and all the attendant risks. The whole situation is awful.

Oh dear, the Russian invasion is causing havoc for the baby selling brokers.

"Ukraine is the second most popular destination after the United States for foreign couples seeking surrogacy services, according to Growing Families, a nonprofit organization working with couples seeking surrogacy and fertility treatment in Ukraine and around the world. An estimated 2,000 to 2,500 children are born through surrogacy in Ukraine each year, and at least 1,500 couples living in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere have surrogate mothers and embryos stored at clinics in Ukraine, says Sam Everingham, global director of Growing Families."

qz.com/2133797/russias-invasion-is-damaging-ukraines-booming-surrogacy-industry/

The article says the women are being transported, makes me think of cattle.

How many women will have their families with them in the 200 capacity bomb shelter BioTexCom have built? Can they bring elderly parents and kids too, or do you only gain access if you are a registered surrogate mother, pregnant or in labour?

Shame on anyone who's created this horrible situation.

JFC.

That's beyond the worst dystopian fiction I can imagine. Battery farmed babies.

I'm sorry, I find this stuff hard to watch.

Hope this works - the word mother appears in the headline!

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/surrogate-mothers-fear-pressure-to-flee-ukraine-gsntx9z7f?fbclid=IwAR2KLVAfB4dvfiJuHx2pSf8p7lDs93Z-0xBIu5jdHqzW6sEkJB2vanQJj2E

Fucking hell.

Fucking

fucking

fucking hell.

some big fat lies And some big fat bribes.

I've been thinking about how communications will be affected and the banks. The monies paid to the surrogacy agency aren't going to be paid out to these women upon giving birth and fulfilling the contract. The final payment will be held by the surrogacy agency and it will be at their discretion to pay it. Final paperwork will have to be completed first. The coercive control is not limited to the commissioning parents.

The banks will have to be fully operational to process transactions and I don't think for a moment that there is no corruption going on in these agencies. Last time, during the pandemic, they shamed women who fled back across the borders to their families and didn't pay they monies owed.

Those poor, poor women.
As if it's not bad enough giving birth in a bomb shelter, heaven forbid any complications like a haemorrhage or needing an LSCS.
Even if they give birth with a straightforward delivery, they must be desperate with worry about their families, their teen sons and brothers who are being called up to fight.
And what of the babies. It's all very well having a bomb shelter full of babies but how to get them out and across the border?

Shame on any government facilitating the buyers getting their babies - whilst I recognise the surrogate mothers are unlikely to want them and any future in Ukraine would be uncertain so the best life for the babies will be elsewhere, but the fact is they will need to be smuggled across borders with no paperwork, many of the neighbouring countries to Ukraine, like Poland, ban surrogacy so sorting out paperwork for these babies will be difficult to put it mildly, or more likely involve some big fat lies. It's people smuggling straight up and governments benignly facilitating the baby buyers are facilitating the farming of women, and the sale of babies.

It's truly sickening.

Newborn babies have already been moved from a hospital in Ukraine to a bomb shelter. Video in the link.

www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/24/world/russia-attacks-ukraine

Surrogacy agency - the one that was in the news with 100 surrogacy born babies during the covid pandemic and whose CEO has admitted that they don't always implant the right embryo - has built a bomb shelter.

"I n anticipation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, BioTexCom, a Kyiv-based fertility clinic, for expectant surrogate mothers and newborn babies, which is equipped with cribs, gas masks, and other essential items."

nowthisnews.com/news/kyiv-fertility-clinic-creates-bomb-shelter-for-surrogate-moms-and-babies

Forget your maternity hospital commissioning parents, your 'surrogate' could be trapped underground with minimum pain relief and an oxygen mask.

That interview @FannyCann

It wasn't that she was saying no, it was just that she needed to understand why the move was taking place.

This is sick, implies she is stupid and doesn't understand as well as she just needs to do as she is told. It drips with entitlement and control.

They will be disappointed as the surrogacy arrangement will be null and void a where outside of Ukraine. Ukraine's laws only apply in Ukraine. Funny that.

That Instagram post OhHolyJesus posted sounds like something out of The Handmaid's Tale. 'Pregnant surrogates.'

I hardly have words for how appalling and callous this is. The poor women and babies. Surrogacy needs to be outlawed.

I'm reading this and seeing the purchasers caring about the baby and maybe the incubator surrogate, and that's pretty much it. No care for the families, the other children, the fact these women have lives settled where they are. No, just uproot yourself in a time of utter crisis to protect our embryos and we'll dress it up as though we care for you when in fact you're just collateral.

I wonder how many surrogate mothers in early pregnancy will get themselves an abortion asap. I don't know what the rules are in Ukraine even in normal times. If they cross the border into Poland they are out of luck as Poland has all but banned abortion. I seem to remember there are particular problems with surrogacy there too, so they are really out of luck if they arrive in Poland.

Interesting from that interview that the surrogate mother is expected to look after the baby until the parents can get custody. The same woman who was expected not to have any emotional bond with the child, and to hand it over without any emotional fall out - the argument often made by apologists that surrogates do not bond with a baby not genetically theirs and that they shouldn't expect to make any emotional tie - not her egg, not her partner's sperm, nothing to do with her.

Did she end up bringing her family with her?
I don't know if she doesn't want them to come or if they physically can't come — it was lost in translation. We obviously said if she wants them to be with her we would cover all costs related with that and support her in whatever way needed."

Well isn't that kind. What the fuck am I reading.

I, too, am waiting spartacus.

This couple must realize they have taken advantage of a woman in a vulnerable state. Surely. Or maybe they are now fully engulfed by their saviour position.

Let’s recap. The surrogate mother has moved and her family when they may have had very good reasons for staying where they were (elderly parents for example).

And these parents cannot see the coercive nature of their ‘contract’? Typical.