Big Fertility

Is the inside of a woman's body a suitable workplace?

On the 13th April this year, a crowd funder appeared on GoFundMe. It was started by Shabana Hussein, who works for a charity called “Growing Families,” which connects potential surrogate parents with women who sell their eggs (euphemistically known as ‘egg donors by industry profiteers) and gay, heterosexual and single people who are looking for surrogates. The crowd funder was called “The Nameless Boy,” and purported to be finding funds to “rescue an abandoned baby.” This baby was born in Ukraine in January 2022 through surrogacy but was rejected by his intended parents because he was born with a medical condition.

One of the updates on the GoFundMe says, “With the help of a wonderful agency (World Centre of Baby, a “full-service surrogacy agency” based in Ukraine) who have offered to arrange and pay for the ambulance to move this precious baby out of Ukraine, I hope we can get him moved soon. With the help of all your donations, I can make sure his medical bills are paid, the Ukrainian legal fees are paid and we have everything we need to have him moved.”

After consulting with the consulate, reaching out to lawyers and surrogacy groups, a solution was found; the boy could now be moved to the UK where he would be put up for adoption. The appeal concluded with; “Please help this boy to finally get what he deserves – a loving family,” and a little red heart.

The question remains as to why the clinic would not themselves meet the costs. The appeal has since been taken down, but it is just the latest debacle in the debates over surrogacy that have been raging.

Increasingly, heterosexuals, gay men and even a few lesbians pay for surrogacy services in order to produce children. In Ukraine alone, more than 2000 children are born through surrogacy every year. The majority of ‘commissioning parents’ are foreign, heterosexual  couples. There are around 50 reproductive clinics in the country, as well as many agencies who match couples - known as "intended parents" - to surrogates. The price of a surrogacy package starts from £25,000. The surrogate mother can get up to £10,000, but I have spoken to four individual women who say they were given less than half of the advertised amount.

Nowhere is surrogacy bigger business than the Kyiv-based BioTexCom Centre for Human Reproduction; it is the largest surrogacy clinic in the world. They say on their website “there is no absolute infertility,” and if you decide to purchase their services, they boast that they will keep trying until you get a baby. They proudly inform prospective parents that they were responsible for impregnating the 66-year-old Swiss woman who “successfully carried and gave birth to healthy twins” using donated eggs.

Their pool of egg donors, they tell us, is “one of the largest in the world.” All donors have to be in “good physical and psychological health,” they need to have at least one healthy child, and, boasts the website, “of course, [have a] pleasant appearance.” You don’t have to take Bio TexCom’s word for the attractiveness of the egg donors; the potential surrogate parents may view photographs and video interviews of the donors, including a “3D photo on which you can see your donor from different angles.”

You might think that the war in Ukraine would have affected the work of this organisation, but in a video on their website they boast, “We did not stop working for a single day.” There was high tech equipment and a modern reception desk. There were people carrying out babies in bags that looked like shopping bags. There were lots of babies in neat rows. There was a calm and reassuring customer service manager, a woman, telling baby buyers that their surrogate was taking precautions and would be safe. There was a calm and reassuring clinic director, a man, telling us that the clinic was still open for business.

The reality of surrogacy and of BioTexCom is much different than the glossy images and reassuring text on their website. The overwhelming majority of women in surrogacy sign up to it because of poverty. Financial coercion is not a choice. Neither the video, nor the website mentioned the fact that in 2018 and 2019, there were several criminal investigations into the company, and several women reported BioTexCom to police after having their wombs removed following surrogate pregnancies. It was also silent about the fact that in 2011, there were mix-ups with embryos during surrogacy procedures at BioTexCom that led to an investigation into human trafficking, and the fact that three babies were rejected by commissioning parents due to health defects not detected during pregnancies.

Because commercial surrogacy is legal in Ukraine, the country has become a popular choice for individuals and couples seeking rent-a-womb services. In many European countries, including the UK, when a surrogate gives birth, she is listed as the mother on the birth certificate and if married, her husband will be listed as the father. In Ukraine the intended parents are listed on the birth certificate. That means getting the baby a passport and bringing them home is fairly straightforward.

The reality of commercial surrogacy is very different from the image that people in the global North tend in their minds. The poster girl is not a commercial surrogate, but an altruistic one. A blonde smiling young woman, she offers kindly offers to carry a pregnancy for an infertile couple. She does not enter into this arrangement for financial benefit and handing over the baby to the commissioning parents causes her no distress, only pure joy. Like the “happy hooker” in prostitution, she represents a tiny minority of those involved in the womb trade.

In fact, there are stark similarities between prostitution and surrogacy industries. Both are populated by young desperate women, who find that they have no other way to earn a living. Many are coerced and abused, and the inside of woman's body is used as a workplace in both. Those accessing the services of both prostituted women and surrogates have class, financial and often, racial privilege over her.  Both prostitution and surrogacy are big business, and both are continuously framed as a choice for the women involved. Such are the similarities between the two some refer to surrogacy as “gestitution.”

But what about those women that do genuinely offer their womb for use by an infertile couple or individual? What right do I or any feminist have to say that she should not be allowed or able to do that?

The choice argument applied to surrogacy is a neoliberal one, in that those supporting the practice and look only at the individuals the benefits directly from it as opposed to the effect that commercialisation of women's wombs has on wider society generally and women's status specifically. When women’s bodies become big business, abuse follows like night the day.

And as for the baby boy abandoned in Ukraine? The most recent update from Shabana Hussein to the Facebook group reads:

 “Unfortunately, the fundraiser has been picked up by anti-surrogacy groups. As such I’m [going ] to be closing it down for any further donations. Any donations made so far will be used for this baby’s evacuation. For anyone wanting to make any future donation, Growing Families will be taking these through their website. If anyone shared the fundraiser on social media, please remove the link. We are asking everyone not to mention this baby outside of the surrogacy groups now as we need it to die down.” I can’t help but wonder why it is such a problem that those critical of surrogacy can see the crowd funder.

Before the war, Covid caused difficulties for the surrogacy trade in Ukraine. Hundreds of babies were stranded in the country, with the commissioning parents unable to travel to collect their merchandise. This led Mykola Kuleba, Ukraine’s ombudsman for children said that surrogacy services for foreign couples in Ukraine should be banned.

In the meantime, it is business as usual for New Hope Surrogacy, based in Kyiv.

“These days were tense as we had to relocate our surrogates to safe areas in Ukraine or abroad. All surrogates were moved successfully with their children. Some ladies are staying in their homes because their regions are safe but if there is any risk we will relocate them asap. New Hope and our partners are slowly getting back to life and resuming work on new cases. All your embryos are safe!”

When fertility is commercialised, so are the babies born of surrogacy. What price do we put on human life?