Almost 50 newborn babies who were delivered of their surrogate mothers have been left stranded in Ukraine’s capital due coronavirus lockdown that has shut down borders and prevented their would-be parents from picking them up.
Meanwhile locals seem worried that the country has become one of the highest supplier of surrogate babies to prospective parents all over the world.
In a video by Biotexcom, which describes itself as a “center for human reproduction”, 46 newborn babies are seen lying in their cradles at a hotel called ‘Venice’ or being taken care of by the clinical staff.
Foster parents, the clinic lamented, “do not have the opportunity to pick up their newborns” as borders remain shut and lockdowns enforced because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, they shouldn’t worry about “these sweeties,” as nurses regularly feed them and expose them to fresh air.
Would-be parents come from the US, China, Britain, Germany and other countries, one of the caregivers reveals in the video. The widely shared footage had been doing the rounds on social media until it reached Lyudmila Denisova, the parliamentary ombudsman in charge of children’s rights.
Also sharing the offbeat video, the official rang the alarm about the “mass and systemic” problem.
Surrogate motherhood is advertised and marketed as a “high-quality product,” but offering such “services” can lead primarily to children’s rights abuse, Denisova warned.
The news suggests that the government isn’t doing enough to safeguard its people, just as Ukraine “becomes a country which donors its newborn children to foreigners and can’t [decide] their fate,” she argued.
Surrogacy isn’t explicitly prohibited by Ukraine’s legislation, effectively lying in a legal gray zone. Those behind the business of newborn babies could stand accused of human trafficking under relevant laws, but officials seem unable to shrink the country’s booming surrogate motherhood industry.
What’s more, scandalous cases like this pop up in local media coverage from time to time. Weeks ago, Ukrainian police raided a private reproductive clinic that has been allegedly “selling babies” to Chinese males.
Aspiring parents had to pay around $50,000 to arrange for the artificial insemination of a surrogate mom, as well as the legal services and fictive marriages needed to facilitate smuggling children abroad.
I see that the topic of surrogacy is still topical for many. We’ve been through it. But our path is not over yet, our child is still in Ukraine and we cannot take him home yet. But the most important thing for us is that he lives now in comfortable conditions with a nanny, who has medical education. And most importantly, they live in a separate apartment, not in an incubator like this. The Feskov Clinic, where I was provides all the risks. And despite the fact that we are worried, I believe that everything will be fine. The main thing is that the borders are opened quickly.
And these poor children…What if they mix them up? How do they know where whose baby is? I saw the video, there’s no tags on the kids’ hands or any other identification marks.They’ll accidentally put it in the wrong crib and mix it up.