Over the past decade, surrogacy, or the “rent-a-womb” industry, as critics sometimes call it, has become a booming global industry. In 2016, the Swiss NGO International Social Service estimated that 20,000 babies annually were born via surrogacy.
Although surrogacy is legal in most U.S. states, and an increasingly mainstream option, it is banned across much of Europe and in many other parts of the world, meaning those interested in pursuing it must look outside their home countries to find surrogates.
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But the patchwork of conflicting national regulations and the proliferation of women traveling across national borders to seek surrogates also creates the space in which companies like BioTexCom, Ukraine’s most successful surrogacy agency, operate.
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The war in Ukraine has exposed the harsh realities of surrogacy in the eastern European country that remained largely hidden or glossed over during peacetime. Maryna Legenka, vice president of the human rights NGO La Strada-Ukraine, questioned the safety of surrogacy during the war despite the potential happiness it can bring would-be parents. “There are no safe places in Ukraine today,” she said. “And all the clinics faced very serious problems.”
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The Ukrainian women’s rights activist Maria Dmytrieva, director of programs at the Kyiv-based Democracy Development Center, is a staunch opponent to surrogacy. “The protection of women in Ukraine is terrible,” she said, describing surrogacy as “tantamount to enslavement.”
