The forgotten and terrible fate of surrogate babies left behind in Ukraine.
Newsroom (24/03/2022 09:00, Gaudium Press) Every day we get up, we attend to our personal affairs, have our coffee; some pray, others do not, and we go on about our daily routine, which continues until the end of the day, until, after dinner, we lie down again in our beds to sleep. Some dream, others do not, and the next morning we get up, attend to our personal affairs, have our coffee…
And, often as not, we complain about something, be it the traffic, the weather, the tasks which await, our bosses, our co-workers, our relatives, the shop or supermarket attendants, the lack of time, tiredness, politics or the bad internet signal that hinders our escape into the virtual world, where we go to soothe our woes in videos, chat groups, or on social networks.
However, in recent times, we are constantly being pulled out of our comfort – or discomfort – zones by darker events like the pandemic – which seems to be going away – and the war in Ukraine, which has come in to replace it and is already impacting the whole world. And in circumstances like these, the heavy veil of harsh realities is lifted, leading us to real life horror movie scenarios.
Images of bombings, wounded people, bodies being thrown into mass graves, endless lines of refugees crossing borders, crying children: all this has a painful impact on us. But there are other terrible things that certainly would not attract our attention if they were not laid bare by the war. Very serious things, but which, because they are happening (apparently) far away, do not have enough force to break through the siege of our monotonous life of repetitive days and small complaints.
Mothers for hire
One of these dark things is the nefarious trade in human beings that has taken place in various parts of the world, and in which Ukraine is one of the main markets. Every year, between 2,000 and 2,500 children are produced under these conditions in that country, where there are about 40 clinics of the so-named “gestation of substitution“, popularly known as “surrogacy“. Ninety per cent of the buyers are foreigners, who, until the beginning of the war, placed the country of Ukraine as the main destination of the so-called “reproductive tourism”.
There are several other countries that legally perform this immoral procedure as well, such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Georgia, the Czech Republic, the United States, Australia, India, Canada and Colombia. However, in Ukraine, it is cheaper. A baby, brand new, is going for between 40 and 65 thousand euros (something between 44,000 and 71,500 American dollars). In the United States, for example, a surrogate mother producing a baby costs no less than $110,000, and can cost as much as $130,000.
The only factor that prevented the business from being even more prosperous in Ukraine is that the country has some restrictions: it only accepts the producing of children for heterosexual couples, officially married and with medical problems of infertility. In the United States or Colombia, for example, this requirement does not exist: they pay and accept whoever has the money, regardless of whether it is a single person or a same-sex couple.
One of the stages in the process of this type of reproduction is in vitro fertilization, when the egg is fertilized in a laboratory and, after the necessary period for the embryo to mature – around five days – it is transferred to the womb of the surrogate mother. The egg to be fertilized can be from the paying mother or obtained through egg donation (or “egg sale”, to be more accurate, because the verb “to donate” has no practical application in this type of transaction). Then comes into play a third mother, who can be chosen from a catalogue, according to characteristics such as height, weight, hair and eye colour, type of nose, etc.. and to give more pomp to the business, beautiful terms are used. One does not say, for example, “pay the donor”, but instead, “give her compensation”.
The war and the “merchandise”
But a war happened and the situation became more complicated. Recently, between one bombing raid and another, we saw news and images of 21 newborn babies in plastic cradles in a makeshift shelter in a basement on the outskirts of Kiev. Who are these children? Where are their families? The mothers who rented their wombs for them to be gestated have probably fled or are trying to flee for their lives, and the fathers who ordered the “merchandise” are in various parts of the world, bemoaning the despair of having lost their investment and perhaps never being able to get the babies out of that country. They are nobody’s children, these little ones who have simply been left behind.
Does all this sound terrible? Fear not, there is more! Since abortion is legal in the country of Ukraine, upon the invasion of Russia (where abortion is also legal), surrogacy agencies have been asking pregnant women to abort their children, because they know that the conflict situation does not guarantee the completion of contracts and, without the delivery of healthy babies in perfect condition, there is no payment, so the baby selling business is suffering a huge blow!
A major problem, is it not? Many are concerned about the situation of Ukrainian women, who are now carrying children in their wombs who are not theirs, and with whom they have been taught not to establish emotional bonds. They have to leave the country because of the war, so they either have to abort their children or let them be born, these infants who are not theirs and for whom they will probably not be paid, since many of the buyers will not be able to enter the country to pick up their packages.
It should be remembered that, of the numbers reported, only a small amount is given as payment or “compensation” to the owners of the rented wombs. The price for this “work” ranges from 8 to 10 thousand euros (between 40 and 50 thousand reais), and there is no guarantee that these women will receive the stipulated amount or that someone will take responsibility for these babies if something goes wrong. And something certainly did go wrong.
Others lament the suffering of the “parents” who hired the services. Couples from different parts of the world who, in an effort to circumvent the conditions imposed on them by nature, decided to do it their own way and spend their money buying cute little babies, gestated in a country that is now suffering a terrible invasion. They follow the rules of free trade, after all: it is their money and they spend it as they wish… Until not so long ago, slaves were bought for domestic or farm work; today, children are bought. And, both then and now, it all seems absolutely normal.
Children of God
My concern is not with any of these people, who use their free will to do what they think is right, either to buy or to sell, to rent, without giving much importance to ethical and moral values. My concern is for the children. They are not trifles, they are not toys. They are human beings, they are children of God, they are our fellow creatures, and now they are there, with no guilt on anyone’s part. These little ones are forgotten, left without a name, without affection, without human warmth, without breastfeeding, without adequate care and without any security that they will be taken to the destination reserved for them.
My concern is with these and with so many others who are still in some womb; those who will soon be no more than scraps and will not even be granted the mass grave where the corpses of those killed in the bombings are being thrown.
It is revolting to write about this, and for five days I have been putting off this task, because it turns my stomach, alters my heartbeat and tears my soul apart, doing greater damage to it than the bombs that bring down historic buildings in Ukrainian cities for which the whole world is lamenting.
According to the agency BioTexCom, which is responsible for 25% of this heinous trade, between 200 and 300 surrogate mothers are due to give birth in the next three months. This company owns the 21 babies we mentioned above, who are in a bunker in a suburb of Kiev, being cared for by six company employees.
This rich trade in infant lives had already been damaged during the pandemic, when some 1,000 babies could not be removed from Ukraine, many of them ending up in shelters for possible adoption, or who knows what sad end.
Only worried about money?
The IVMED clinic is concerned about the logistics of raw material for the manufacture of people, and reported that it has already transported the contents of 17 freezing warehouses, containing 12,000 stored embryos and ova, from the war zone to neighbouring countries. Sadly, and to be expected, the greater concern is with profits and maintaining the business after the end of the conflict.
Perhaps people should remove, at least for a while, the hero’s mantle that has been placed on the back of President Volodymyr Zelensky, and transfer it to people like these girls who remain in that basement, caring for the babies in these grueling present conditions, while listening to the bombs falling all around.
Two of them told a French reporter that they did not have the courage to run away and abandon their newborns. Antonina Yefimovich, who is a mother of two girls, said that her family has already left the country, but that she will not do the same thing because she feels responsible for the babies, who “are helpless and need care.” She also said that she is very hopeful that, at the end of all this, the “parents” will manage to pick up the children.
The Church is obviously totally opposed to this practice, which treats as merchandise not only the child but also the mother, who commercializes her own body. While sympathetic to the suffering of women affected by sterility, the Church is opposed to the decriminalization of surrogacy, whose practice is based on making an instrument of the female body, transforming it into a tool of production, which injures her human dignity.
Although it can be argued that the woman who rents her body does so voluntarily and perfectly consciously, the practice of surrogacy contradicts the principle of the unavailability of the body, a concept that protects us from the commodification of the human body and works to prevent the poorest from being tempted to abdicate their dignity by selling the only good they possess: their own body. And for those who argue that it is not a matter of trade but of helping infertile women, the Church helps us to ask the question: have you ever seen rich women lending their wombs to poor women?
We can think about the precarious economic situation that can lead a woman to accept this type of “occupation” in exchange for money, or the extremes to which these couples are willing to go to have a child, and who might even pay to rent a machine, if there were one already invented, that could produce children. And then, of course, it is almost impossible not to be moved by the situation of these defenseless babies.
Divine justice
However, there is a pain that is deeper and much greater than all of these. And it is this pain that I suggest that each one of us think about. I am referring to the pain of the Mother of all mothers. Think of Our Lady’s tears and suffering in the face of this situation.
In one of Her apparitions, She said that She was holding her Son’s arm in an attempt to postpone the punishments, to give us more time to amend our lives and convert. But her sorrow at such tragedies is so great and her tears so abundant that She may need to use both hands to wipe her face, thus giving up the means to hold the arm of God’s justice, that arm which will then be free to do what needs to be done.
Then, yes, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and this will include each one of us who is content to treat the most glaring absurdities as normal, or to simply not care because we need to wake up in the morning, wash up, have our coffee and go to sleep again; complaining about trifles, while chaos sets into the world – chaos painted in soft colours and adorned with the smiles of pink and beautiful children. Nobody’s children, who today, in the midst of an insane war, are simply being left behind.
By Afonso Pessoa
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
