Surrogacy in Ukraine - Times article

[Soontobe60]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/surrogate-mothers-fear-pressure-to-flee-ukraine-gsntx9z7f?shareToken=39849d90d0863ecb43166b4738993526
So it would seem that in Ukraine, they admit that surrogacy is big business that will suffer economically if Russia invades. And the poor foreign clients will want the surrogates to move out of the country if it happens - despite them having their own families! Talk about exploitation!!

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.

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.

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

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_

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.

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.

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.

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'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'm sorry I find this absolutely sick

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?

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

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.

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

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

Comment by Martha Gill in the Times:

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

The comments to that article are heartening. People seeing this for what it is.

A new update from the Ukraine Surrogacy Dispatches I subscribe to.

The war gets personal

"It doesn't take long before a war touches everyone in the affected country in some personal way.
In my very first post for Ukraine Surrogacy Dispatches, I wrote about four surrogates and how they were feeling. Three had recently moved to Lviv and were unhappy about it because it felt unnecessary.
That was 19 days ago. Now the agency, Delivering Dreams, has 13 surrogates in Lviv. Yana Belozor, the agency's head surrogacy coordinator, is one of the people taking care of them. She says that they are "holding themselves together" despite all that is happening around them.
Most of the women have family in parts of the country that are currently in danger.
The women are all aware that they may not have homes to return to.
Many of the women are separated from their families.
Only two have their husbands with them.
Eleven of them are separated from their children. (Some by choice, some by circumstance.)
Five of the women have husbands actively engaged in fighting.
One woman's husband is in a region currently fighting to retain control.
Belozor's own husband is a firefighter on the frontlines in Kyiv.
Everyone fears bad news. On Sunday, Belozor learned that one of her closest friends had been killed in battle in the Donbas region on Saturday morning. Because of the war, his body cannot be retrieved and buried, she told me.
Belozor is the godmother of his daughter, who is six. The man also had a son, age three. He leaves behind his wife. Belozor's friend, Alexei Semenyuk, was 35.

Belozor wants the skies over Ukraine closed. Civilian women and children are dying because the skies are not closed, she says. She feels the country is being used as a shield against war elsewhere. "But if the world thinks that they're waiting for the Third World War to start," says Belozor, "everyone should know that it's already started."
For now, at least, they are safe in Lviv."

Eleven of them are separated from their children. (Some by choice, some by circumstance.)Five of the women have husbands actively engaged in fighting

I just can't imagine this. Compare those commissioning parents with these couples. I just see red thinking of the disparities. They may never see their husbands alive and to be separated from their children and then go through the emotional pains of childbirth and saying goodbye to the baby...the trauma added to these women is unconscionable. I doubt they will, but those buying Ukrainian babies today should feel great shame.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.mylondon.news/news/uk-world-news/im-sending-swat-teams-rescue-23329821.amp

From the article above:

The grim reality, Sam said, is that there will be babies that never make it and people who won’t be able to have children. He said: “Many of them will have to leave embryos behind, leave dreams behind. Some of them won't ever be able to start again [because] they're broken financially. Some might never see babies that have been carried by surrogates because the bombing is so intense right now not all surrogates will survive.”

Terrible isn't it @Delphinium20 those poor women must feel desperate, stuck in some flat somewhere until they give birth, apart from their husbands and children at this dangerous time.

Then we have Sam Everingham popping up focussing on the woes of people who hired impoverished women to breed a baby for them.

So much wrong with that article, thanks for posting @Cattenberg

"We've got about 800 couples globally who've got pregnancies there,” he added"

So about 800 couples that he knows about - 800 Ukrainian women pregnant with babies for foreign buyers.

And how does he propose these SWAT teams evacuate the babies? Stuff them in a bullet proof backpack and head for the border?
It's people trafficking by any standards, but with babies with no papers?? How does he think that will work? One of the major problems is that Ukrainian law recognises surrogacy but the buyers have to turn up in person to do the paperwork. Apart from the fact that they now cannot travel there I imagine the official department that normally deals with this has other priorities right now if those officials are working at all, and not evacuating or engaged with war activities.
I hope he gets prosecuted for people trafficking if these babies are exported without their mothers or any documents.

Yes, it’s probably the most alarming piece about surrogacy I’ve ever seen. Some articles express genuine concern for the surrogate mothers. Some express concern for the surrogate mothers while they are “pregnant with British citizens”. But good luck finding any empathy with the surrogate mothers in this one.

I cannot believe this guy.

Buys babies, brokers the sale of babies for others and comes at the U.K. 'altruistic' model with this:

"There's much higher demand there is supply. In the UK you’ve got to support your surrogate yourself and that takes a lot of energy and time. Surrogates, because they're not getting paid, often want an ongoing relationship and some couples just don't want that

But when people do decide to go abroad looking for surrogates, particularly through unregulated channels, they can end up being easy prey for scammers looking to exploit them."

Like you're innocent of this Sam? What a vile man.

800 women, pregnant, it's not 800 pregnancies. Where is the baby kept, a cupboard?

He talks about surrogate mothers like they are cattle commodities in a failing business.