"Hundreds of babies stranded in Ukraine show indecency in surrogacy"

Claire de la Hougue is a doctor of law, associate researcher at the ECLJ. She is the author of numerous legal articles on bioethics. She intervened in the European Parliament and the Council of Europe on gestation for others.

The image of dozens of newborn babies waiting in a hotel in Kiev for their sponsors to come and collect them has revealed an often overlooked reality: Ukraine, a member country of the Council of Europe, is an important center of international reproduction market. Customers find egg donors and mothers carrying their phenotype or, to put it more simply, white women, for a much lower price than in the United States. Even clinics in Asia come to supply themselves with “Caucasian-type” oocytes in Ukraine.

Theoretically there is a legal framework - infertile married parents, genetic link with at least one of the two sponsors, no genetic link between the surrogate mother and the child - but some agencies shamelessly break free of it. The surrogate mother renounces her rights in a notarial contract signed with the sponsors who are directly recorded on the birth certificate of the child thus obtained. This act is therefore untrue, since it indicates as a mother another woman than the one who gave birth, what used to be called in France the crime of supposed child.

This shocking image, first published by a surrogacy agency to reassure its customers and try to force the hand of the Ukrainian government to open the borders, will have had the merit of drawing attention to these children conceived and given birth in performance of a contract, taken from their mother at birth and sold. It shows to what extent “surrogate motherhood” is contrary to the most elementary humanity. It provoked many reactions, in Ukraine and abroad.

It was Lyudmyla Denisova, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Ukrainian Parliament, who informed the press that more than a hundred newborn babies were waiting for their sponsors, blocked by the closure of the borders linked to the confinement. She denounced the mass surrogacy industry which promotes babies as "high quality products". Noting that this situation shows that the State is not taking adequate measures to protect the rights and dignity of children, she called on the parliament to prohibit surrogacy for the benefit of foreigners, saying that children in Ukraine should not be trafficked.

Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Archbishop Major of Kiev and Galicia, Head of the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, and Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, Archbishop of Lvov and President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of the Latin Rite, also published mi -but a joint letter firmly condemning the practice of gestation for others: such a manifestation of contempt for the human person and his dignity is unacceptable. They called on the government to ban surrogacy. They added that the fact that this practice was legal prevented development and discredited Ukraine in the eyes of European society. They called on the government to adopt a family policy ensuring that Ukrainian mothers no longer need to trade in their bodies and children for their own survival and that of their families. They affirmed that surrogacy, even allegedly non-profit, is inherently bad morally, source of innumerable suffering for all those involved, first children and mothers but also intermediaries and sponsors. When it is commercial, it must be judged even more harshly because it adds to the fact of buying and selling the functions of the body of the woman and the person of the child.

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This debate on surrogacy comes at a time when the demographic situation in Ukraine is dire. Economic difficulties, political instability, poverty and corruption have caused high emigration and a fall in the birth rate. The fertility rate is today less than 1.4 children per woman. The population has fallen by more than 10 million inhabitants in 30 years. Ukraine has no more children if not for export ... Sponsors and intermediaries take advantage of the destitution of Ukrainian women to strip them even of their most intimate and precious, motherhood.

The indignation at these children did not remain confined to Ukraine. The press in many countries has reported this and the Swedish deputy Alexander Christiansson, member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has brought the subject to the Committee of Ministers. In a written question submitted on 3 June, he recalled that the European Convention on the legal status of children born out of wedlock provides that "the maternal filiation of any child born out of wedlock is established by the mere fact of his birth" . However, although Ukraine has ratified this Convention, its family code conversely provides that the parentage of the child born thanks to a surrogate mother is established directly with the "future parents", even in cases where the child was conceived with eggs donated by a third party. The woman who gives birth to the child therefore does not appear in the parentage of the child, which is contrary to the Convention.

The Committee of Ministers, which brings together the 47 ambassadors to the Council of Europe, will therefore have to respond and indicate what actions it plans to take with regard to Ukraine in order to make it respect its commitment.

More generally, surrogacy is contrary to many international conventions ratified by Ukraine. In addition to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its additional protocol on the sale of children, mention may be made in particular of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, as well as the conventions prohibiting the and trafficking. A State which respects its international commitments cannot accept this practice on its territory or endorse it when its nationals use it abroad.

These children stranded in a hotel in Kiev force us to face reality: surrogacy means the production of children as goods to satisfy the desire of wealthy adults. It involves the exploitation of poor women. Cruel and destructive for children and mothers, this practice must be eradicated.