KYIV — “Now, our huge drawback is that we lack girls…”
With so many Ukrainian girls having gone overseas because the Russian invasion, surrogacy firm BioTexCom’s Ihor Pechenoha says there aren’t sufficient surrogate moms to satisfy what has turned out to be rising demand for infants from overseas.
A yr in the past, Pechenoha, the corporate’s medical director, was armed and in navy uniform when he obtained La Marea in a basement transformed right into a shelter for about 30 infants. BioTexCom had transferred to the placement from a Kyiv hospital after it was bombed by Russian forces.
On the time, it had been simply two weeks because the starting of the invasion, and it regarded like Russian troops may take the Ukrainian capital at any second. Since then, some issues have modified, although others have not.
International {couples} who had contracted to amass the newborns did not dare to enter a rustic at struggle to gather them. Nurses cared for the pregnant girls day and evening, whereas on the similar time worrying about what would occur to their very own households. There, they might earn thrice as a lot as in a public hospital. Surrounded by diapers, cribs and tins of powdered milk, a soldier armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle saved watch.
A yr later, the infants are in Romania, Spain, Italy and elsewhere. Pechenoha is wearing civilian garments as he meets a journalist on the BioTexCom clinic. “We resumed the applications in Might of final yr, so we now have solely delivered seven infants thus far. This yr, we wish to begin recovering the figures from earlier than the struggle: about 450 infants,” says Pechenoha.
“We don’t have sufficient girls right here, and we can’t convey them frequently for medical monitoring as a result of because the struggle started, there are not any flights to Ukraine,” he continues. “Now we have extra demand than ever, as a result of till final yr, many individuals knew nothing about Ukraine, and thought we had been a third-world nation,” he says.
Rising demand for surrogate moms
The BioTexCom clinic consists of three mansion-style chalets positioned on a hill on the outskirts of Kyiv. In the course of the first weeks of the invasion, the entrance line was only some kilometers away, so the medical amenities had been fortified. Pregnant girls lived alongside greater than 100 troopers, ready to struggle at any second. In the meantime, close to the cities of Bucha and Irpin, Russian troops dedicated crimes in opposition to humanity: torture, mutilation, rape and execution.
In these days, the Ukrainian authorities, determined for navy assist from the EU and U.S., tried to show trapped surrogacy infants into one other method to generate worldwide solidarity. Dozens of worldwide journalists visited BioTexCom’s amenities, recorded the infants and interviewed their caregivers and Pechenoha. Again then, he was uninterested in spending a lot of his time doing interviews.
Nobody forces these girls to do it. They do it freely, and with knowledgeable consent.
Now, requested how he feels after a yr of struggle, he replies that he’s drained, however for a special motive: he has principally been dwelling within the clinic as a result of his condo is positioned on the twenty eighth ground, and the frequent energy outages that also have an effect on elements of Kyiv make it inadvisable to take the elevator.
Requested if BioTexCom may look into discovering girls from different international locations to satisfy demand, he does not hesitate: “After all. We have already performed it with two girls. It is not forbidden.” He responds with a “Subsequent query” when requested in regards to the nationality of these two girls, including with a smile that he can’t share the knowledge for moral causes.
{A photograph} of the clinic’s medical staff taken in 2014. Earlier than the struggle, Ukraine was one of the essential facilities for gestational surrogacy.
Surrogacy banned in lots of different European international locations
“We’re in search of girls within the former Soviet republics as a result of, logically, they must be from poorer locations than our shoppers. I’ve not met a single girl with a great financial scenario who has determined to undergo this course of out of kindness, as a result of she thinks she has sufficient kids and desires to assist another person who needs them,” he says.
“They do it as a result of they want the cash to purchase a home, for his or her kids’s schooling. When you’ve got a great life in Europe, you are not going to do it.”
Earlier than the struggle, Ukraine was one of the essential facilities for gestational surrogacy, after Thailand, India and Nepal banned the observe as a result of experiences of exploitation in so-called “girls’s farms.” It’s nonetheless authorized in different former Soviet republics comparable to Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan, in addition to in quite a few states within the U.S.
Pechenoha says he does not perceive why the enterprise is prohibited in a lot of the world. “Nobody forces these girls to do it. They do it freely, and with knowledgeable consent. And we do not give infants to girls who do not have them themselves as a result of, for instance, they do not wish to break their our bodies or issues like that. We solely give them to these {couples} made up of a person and a girl, married, who show that they can not have kids. We do not do it, like different international locations, for gay {couples}. So I do not perceive what the issue is,” he says.
Being psychologically ready
About 20 pregnant girls wait for his or her check-up sitting on massive leatherette sofas. The constructing is split by stairs product of white marble. The design calls to thoughts the cleanliness and modernity of an working room. Some moms are accompanied by their younger kids. After they attain the thirty second week of gestation, they’re transferred to residences in Kiev, the place they dwell till they offer beginning.
In the event that they put another person’s (genetic) materials inside you, the physique is yours, and so are the feelings.
Olga is 40 years outdated. That is the second time she’ll have a child in trade for cash. She does it to assist the three kids she lives with, aged between 11 and 18. With the €16,000 she obtained for the primary being pregnant, she purchased an condo. With the price she receives for the second, she is going to promote the condo and purchase a home. She works as an assistant in a faculty for €160 monthly, the minimal wage in Ukraine. Her husband repairs gasoline installations for €380 monthly. Olga doesn’t rule out gestating a child for an additional household sooner or later.
“I do it to assist these households with their have to have a baby, and for them to assist me with my financial wants,” she says timidly. She doesn’t wish to be photographed. Her eldest daughter, 18, is the one one within the household objects to her job: “She needs to guard me. It is regular. However I am high quality; you simply should be psychologically ready.”
Inside of 1 BioTexCom’s maternity hospitals which has been upgraded with new gear for girls to provide beginning with circumstances near a beginning at dwelling.
Would EU membership make surrogacy unlawful in Ukraine?
Ihor Pechenoha returns to the consulting room to proceed. “If you arrange a non-public clinic, it is to become profitable. However for me, as a health care provider, my satisfaction just isn’t that, however at hand the newborn over to the arms of a pair who needs it a lot,” he says, earlier than confirming that he doesn’t attend the births.
Surrogacy is banned in lots of EU international locations. Requested whether or not he believes Ukraine finally becoming a member of the EU might have an effect on the nation’s surrogacy legal guidelines, he responds: “No alliance can drive a rustic to alter its legal guidelines. Ukraine won’t quit these applications.“
Ihor talks about applications; Olga, the mom, about plans. The surrogacy clinic makes use of bureaucratic language, meant to medicalize the method. However in the long run, listening to the moms permits actuality to emerge: “A pal did it first. I used to be afraid. It appeared unusual to me, as with the whole lot that’s new. It’s important to deeply settle for what you’re going to expertise. The primary time was very arduous as a result of, even when they put another person’s (genetic) materials inside you, the physique is yours, and so are the feelings.”
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