Ukraine has been one of the most highly-sought after locations for would-be parents seeking women to serve as surrogates, a practice that has continued despite the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Reports have indicated that, even as state agencies put travel warnings in effect against visiting Ukraine, the war-torn country remains a popular surrogacy destination.
BioTexCom is not just one of the most popular surrogacy agencies in Ukraine; it is the largest commercial surrogacy agency in the world. Denis Herman, a legal adviser for the agency, told the Independent that business has not changed. “It’s logistics rather than safety concerns clients are concerned with,” he said. “When we speak to couples they are much more concerned about the fact that it takes two days to get here at the moment rather than the missiles and drones flying all over Kyiv.”
A bill was previously under consideration to ban surrogacy in Ukraine, but it was rejected. Meanwhile, couples continue to travel from across Europe in hopes of purchasing a baby, even as their governments try to put a stop to it.
“The desire to have a child is greater than the advice of the Irish Government,” Caroline, a BioTexCom staff member at their Kyiv clinic, said. “I knew one Irish couple last year who were very happy to come here and take a baby with them to Ireland.”
The cost of hiring a surrogate is considerably cheaper in Ukraine than elsewhere. On the high end, surrogacy fees in Ukraine are approximately $80,000. By comparison, in the United States, they can be as much as $200,000. And, as is true with surrogates around the world, the buyers are typically significantly wealthier than the women whose bodies they are buying. Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in the world, and Ukrainian surrogates are frequently tempted by the promise of large amounts of money.
“We would not be completely honest if we say that the surrogate mothers are altruistic and they just want to help the couples,” Herman said. “All of them are interested in having financial compensation. But they are not doing something wrong and they are not forced into this. This is their decision that they have to take. They have separate legal advice.”
Nana Babicheva, currently a surrogate for the third time, is 40 years old and said she only serves as a surrogate mother for the money. “The first time I did it was after a friend told me she had been a surrogate. I get €20,000 each time, which is a large amount of money. Not every person can earn this money in one, two, three years. Some clinics pay more, but BioTexCom will take surrogate mothers who are 40-years-old. Other clinics want 20- to 25-year-olds,” she said.
READ: Surrogacy’s pitfalls: Heartbreaking stories of child abandonment
Yet she also claimed she has no connection with the babies she carries.
“I have no connection with the surrogate babies because I know they are not mine,” she said. “After the birth I don’t take the baby on breast, so there is no kind of connection. It’s like a job to me — a job with benefits because you’re helping other people and you’re helping yourself and your children. Some friends think it’s not ethical because they think that I am selling the baby. That’s not true because I have no DNA connection with it. My job is to carry the baby and give it to people who want to become parents. It’s not selling because they aren’t my babies to sell.”
Multiple studies have found that removing a child at birth, whether they are biologically related or born to a surrogate, can cause lifelong trauma. Despite having no DNA relation, a baby still bonds with his or her mother during pregnancy — hearing the mother’s voice, her heartbeat, her movements — and can even be affected by her emotions.
Albert Tochilovsky, owner of BioTexCom, has been accused of human trafficking, with prosecutors claiming that couples gave birth to children not biologically related to them. Yet it seems no circumstance can stop BioTexCom; it has overcome trafficking allegations and war, even as it openly and blatantly commodifies the human beings it sells — running Black Friday sales and VIP packages.
