TOPIC: surrogacy

Parenthood, Redefined: 11 Hard Questions About Surrogacy

Contributing biologically to a child's creation no longer directly implies parenthood. Surrogacy has shaken up traditional ideas and beliefs about sexuality, reproduction and filiation. The author poses key questions that must be answered to ensure that surrogacy is driven by both science and ethics.

-Analysis-

MURCIA — We live in a rapidly changing society, particularly when it comes to interpersonal and familial relationships. Assisted reproductive technology (hereafter ART) has shaken traditional ideas about sexuality, reproduction and filiation.

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The act of child creation now goes beyond the sexual encounter between a man and a woman. Not only is reproduction without sex possible, it is also possible that there is no filial relationship between the participants who conceive a baby.

In some cases, those who gestate do not use their own eggs, such as with partner-assisted reproduction (ROPA) for couples who both possess female reproductive organs, often lesbians. In another example, sperm donors renounce their parental rights over the babies conceived.

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Surrogacy In Ukraine: Demand Is Booming, But Birth Mothers Have Fled

After more than a year of war, a journalist from Spanish publication La Marea returns to one of the capital's top clinics for foreign couples looking for children. Business is better than ever, though the clinic is looking for women from other former Soviet republics to become surrogate mothers.

KYIV — "Now, our big problem is that we lack women..."

With so many Ukrainian women having gone abroad since the Russian invasion, surrogacy company BioTexCom's Ihor Pechenoha says there are not enough surrogate mothers to meet what has turned out to be growing demand for babies from abroad.

A year ago, Pechenoha, the company's medical director, was armed and in military uniform when he received La Marea in a basement converted into a shelter for about 30 babies. BioTexCom had transferred to the location from a Kyiv hospital after it was bombed by Russian forces.

At the time, it had been just two weeks since the beginning of the invasion, and it looked like Russian troops might take the Ukrainian capital at any moment. Since then, some things have changed, though others haven't.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

Foreign couples who had contracted to acquire the newborns didn't dare to enter a country at war to collect them. Nurses cared for the pregnant women day and night, while at the same time worrying about what would happen to their own families. There, they could earn three times as much as in a public hospital. Surrounded by diapers, cribs and tins of powdered milk, a soldier armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle kept watch.

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How Italy’s New Draconian Bill On Surrogacy Twists The Meaning Of "Women's Dignity"

Italy’s right-wing politicians are trying to ban surrogacy, as the pope pushes parents to have children and feminists are divided on the issue. On such a complicated issue, hard thinking and nuance have been in short supply.

-Essay-

After almost two decades away from Italy, I ended up moving back just after I found out I was pregnant in 2018.

We lived in a stone house among olive trees in the Umbrian countryside, just off a beautiful medieval borgo called Montecastello di Vibio.

Even if I had tried, I could not have picked a better place for my pregnancy to be celebrated — and monitored publicly. With its aging dwellers slowly fading and younger families moving to the big cities, Montecastello was a perfect illustration of Italy’s falling fertility rates.

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Society

Patricia Simón

Ukraine Hopes These Surrogate Babies Will Stir The Conscience Of The West

BioTexCom is responsible for more than half of the 2,500 surrogate babies born annually in Ukraine. This is how, in the middle of the war, the surrogacy company continues to function.

KYIV — With his right hand, he moves the forceps, emulating how embryos are inserted into a woman's uterus. On the left, he holds the walkie-talkie used to communicate with the soldiers monitoring the surroundings of the clinic.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

Dr. Ihor Pechenoga, with three medical specialties, has been working since 2018 as a spokesperson for the surrogacy company BioTexCom, which is responsible for more than half of the 2,500 babies born annually in Ukraine through this procedure. When the Russian invasion began on February 24, he was appointed with the responsibility of protecting the clinic, located very close to the Kyiv front line.

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Society

Michela Marzano

Ethics Of Surrogacy: The Case Of Baby "Luna" Abandoned In Ukraine

Surrogacy is still considered quite controversial, especially in Italy where a story has made headlines after would-be parents renounced a baby born in Ukraine. The author says we must face the ethical (and other) questions rather than dismiss the practice as "uterus for rent."

-Analysis-

ROME — The story of the surrogate child born in Kiev, and then abandoned by its would-be Italian parents, is filled with deep sadness. No child should ever be let go.

And yet, it happens. It happens when a woman decides to give birth anonymously, and the baby is then given up for adoption. Or when a child is placed in temporary foster care, but then never returns to the family of origin. It happens with some premature-born babies who, after being kept alive with the help of sophisticated therapies, will never be picked up by their parents because of a disability. It even happens with adoption: those rare occasions when the kid is returned, putting him or her through a dramatic "double abandonment."

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Ukraine

Hannah Steinkopf-Frank

Adoption, IVF, Surrogacy: COVID-19 Puts New Lives On Hold

We must remember the many lives lost to coronavirus. But we should also not forget the fate of many new lives that have been left up in the air as travel bans and strained health care systems have disrupted plans for surrogacy, adoption and in vitro fertilization around the world.

Surrogacy: Some 100 surrogacy babies are stuck in reproductive clinics around Ukraine, which banned foreigners entering the country in March as the COVID-19 infections spread.

*Reproduction clinic BioTexCom, which is managing 46 surrogacy baby relationships, posted a video online urging the government to work with embassies to allow travel exemptions.

*The expectant parents in this global industry come from France, Germany, Argentina, the U.S. and several other countries around the world. Some pregnant surrogates are stuck in isolation away from their families and some who were able to get into Ukraine before the lockdown are now in legal limbo, unable to return to their home countries.

*Human rights activists say the pandemic has shed light on an often exploitive industry. Melissa Brissman, an attorney running the surrogacy agency Reproductive Possibilities, told NBC News that around 200 couples are currently in surrogacy limbo. "When a blanket rule is made quickly, you get all these unanticipated problems," said Brissman. "These babies have parents ready to take care of them. It doesn't have to be this way."

Adoption: International adoptions have similarly been put on hold, with children in countries ranging from Chad to Morocco to China unable to unite with their new families.

*New parents in countries including India and Cameroon are also stuck in lockdowns, with their children lacking documentation to travel with them.

*In many coronavirus hotspots in the U.S., including New York and New Orleans, group homes are understaffed and foster families are hesitant to risk infection.

*On a hopeful note, some areas have seen an increased interest in people wanting to foster and adopt during this time, including Saskatchewan, which was the first district in Canada to provide online foster training. Closed family courts also aren't stopping adoptions, with some ceremonies in the U.S. taking place over Zoom.

IVF: With nonessential medical procedures shut down, women around the world have also had to stop in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.

*In Japan, which has one of the lowest population growth rates in the world, health experts worry that delayed IVF combined with fears around raising children in a pandemic will decrease the birth rate, The Straits Timesreports.

*With the delicate fertility drug cycle, many worry they have lost their chance at becoming parents, despite having often already spent tens of thousands of dollars on treatments. In France, where treatments for thousands of women have been halted, some estimate there will be a rush on IVF treatments after the pandemic is contained.

*Virginie Rio, the founder of the BAMP Collective that advocates for IVF patients, told French Slate, "When we hear that infertility treatment is not vital, we forget the reality for the couples concerned: having a child is often a fundamental life project for them."

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LES ECHOS

Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet

The Human Thing: When It's Not About “Bioethics”

In the place of narcissistic and subjective dignity wrongly invoked by procreation militants, we need a return to the transcendent and objective dignity of human nature.

-OpEd-

RENNES — Blame our laziness or the traps of euphemism, but we've grown accustomed to using the timid term of "bioethics' to debate certain subjects that are, in reality, philosophical and moral meta-norms that govern us all — that is, none other than the singular and irreducible dignity of the human species, as opposed to fauna, flora and objects. The humanist philosophy at the source of what we call "human rights," no stranger to the Judeo-Christian heritage, is based on the premise that a human being is endowed with conscience and reason, and the fact that this particular ability distinguishes us from the rest of the living and non-living world.

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China

Qin Peipei

Post One-Child Policy, China Should Embrace Surrogacy

China eased its controversial one-child policy in late 2015. But there are still plenty of people, for one reason or another, who can't have children and could benefit from surrogate woman willing to carry the pregnancy.

BEIJING — A recent article in the state-run People's Daily turned new attention to the always hot-button topic of human reproduction. For one thing, it suggested that changes made in 2015 to the controversial one-child policy have not, as many had predicted, produced a sudden baby boom. So couples are not after all rushing to have another baby just because the law says they can.

But what really stood out in the article, titled "Anxiety Over The Second Child That Doesn't Arrive," was its focus on surrogacy. The practice by which a woman agrees to carry the child for would-be parents is outlawed in China, but the authors of the article suggest the issue should be revisited as an option for some couples. The article notes that a significant number of parents in China would like to have another child but, for one reason or another, cannot conceive or carry the baby.

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Sources

Yann Verdo

20 Years After Dolly, The Temptation To Clone Humans

Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.

PARIS — It's been almost 20 years since the work of Scottish scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell led to the birth of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal. News of the breakthrough rippled like a shockwave, provoking both enthusiasm and outrage. The biggest concern? That we might do the same with humans.

The European Council hastened to amend its Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine, prohibiting "any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being alive or dead."

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TOPIC: surrogacy

No international consensus

Risk of reproductive tourism

Questions raised

Individual vs. society

After more than a year of war, a journalist from Spanish publication La Marea returns to one of the capital's top clinics for foreign couples looking for children. Business is better than ever, though the clinic is looking for women from other former Soviet republics to become surrogate mothers.

Growing demand for surrogate mothers

Surrogacy banned in many other European countries

Being psychologically prepared

Would EU membership make surrogacy illegal in Ukraine?

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51 °C

How millennials and boomers see Putin's nuclear threats differently

Italy’s right-wing politicians are trying to ban surrogacy, as the pope pushes parents to have children and feminists are divided on the issue. On such a complicated issue, hard thinking and nuance have been in short supply.

Fertility crisis

Abortion contradiction

Feminists divided

Legalization with caveats

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קבר יוסף

Ukraine hopes these surrogate babies will stir the conscience of the West

BioTexCom is responsible for more than half of the 2,500 surrogate babies born annually in Ukraine. This is how, in the middle of the war, the surrogacy company continues to function.

Pictures of newborns

A lucrative business

The embryos are ready

Choosing the appearance of the birth mother

A country at war

Surrogacy is still considered quite controversial, especially in Italy where a story has made headlines after would-be parents renounced a baby born in Ukraine. The author says we must face the ethical (and other) questions rather than dismiss the practice as "uterus for rent."

Rules are needed

Comparing to organ transplants

More than blood and DNA

In the place of narcissistic and subjective dignity wrongly invoked by procreation militants, we need a return to the transcendent and objective dignity of human nature.

China eased its controversial one-child policy in late 2015. But there are still plenty of people, for one reason or another, who can't have children and could benefit from surrogate woman willing to carry the pregnancy.

Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.

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