The requirements to use a surrogate in Ukraine are simple: A heterosexual couple must be married, show they are medically unable to have children and provide at least half of the child’s genetic link, via sperm or embryo. | SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Still, she added, once she saw the baby’s father she calmed down: “I knew that I didn’t do it in vain, I made two people happy who dreamed of a child all their lives,” she said. WELT obtained a tranche of BioTexCom documents from 2014 to 2017 showing just how little surrogates were paid. Women received €100-200 for each embryo transfer, then for a successful pregnancy and examinations. Egg donations were priced at €500 per egg, compared withper egg in the U.S. Each contract varied but on average, surrogates were paid €8,000 to €12,000 for carrying a child to birth. BioTexCom often charged clients five times that amount.
“We have a number of complaints of the surrogate mothers who claim that they were forced by the prosecutors to say what the prosecutors wanted to hear, not the information the surrogates actually wanted to express,” he said. More specifically, Hasson said, some medical procedures offered by BioTexCom and other global surrogacy firms pose significant health risks to the women. Implanting several embryos in surrogates to increase the chances of a successful pregnancy or because would-be parents want two children, she said, significantly increases the risk of complications for both the babies and the women carrying them.
“From legislation to reality, there is little interest in these issues. The biological mother, who carries the baby, has no rights. She is not legally a mother, [has] no rights to the baby, nor right to medical procedure should complications occur,” she said. “These are things ultimately decided by the commissioning parent and the surrogacy center.”