Surrogacy – if children become a commodity

Where war is raging, the abyss of other unethical “businesses” comes to light in the respective country. The author and freelance journalist Birgit Kelle describes one of them in her article in the newspaper “paz” of March 24th 2022 on surrogacy: “Ordered, yet not picked up”: She says that in Ukraine, hundreds of newborn babies are currently waiting in reproduction clinics air-raid shelters to be picked up by the parents who ordered them. Market leader BioTexCom is one of such clinics. Kelle gives a vivid account to where it leads once you start treating children as objects.

The clinics running this lucrative business because of the worldwide unfulfilled desire to have children, and often from homosexual couples, appeal to foreign embassies and politicians to find solutions for the children being exported from the war zone. Since one baby costs between 50,000 and 70,000 Euros, she reports that the contracts need to be fulfilled. The ordering ‘parents’ pay around 70,000 Euros to the clinics in Ukraine, of which the surrogate mother receives about 10,000 Euros. With normal work, she would merely earn an average of about 300 Euros per month. With one birth, this means that she almost earns a three years’ salary, which is a fortune for many women giving birth. However, Kelle warns that they might not only pay this with the exploitation of their bodies, but perhaps their lives, too, right now..

Surrogate mothers who have not yet given birth are not allowed to leave the country, and often have families and children of their own. The clinics deliberately contract women with childbirth experience. They are contractually bound to observe a healthy diet during pregnancy and to avoid drugs and alcohol. Kelle explains that usually, surrogate mothers must deliver by Cesarean section and are not allowed to breastfeed the child, so that no bond between mother and child develop. So what would be close at hand in this emergency situation is prohibited, namely the surrogate mothers taking care of their children themselves. Instead, the babies are bottle-fed by strangers and are currently sleeping in plastic beds in air-raid shelters.

Some newspaper editorials vividly raise voices saying: “Help the parents to fetch their children!”. However, helping these parents in legal terms would mean to assist them in committing a crime. Kelle raises the question whether you should really help those who deliberately disregard the legal system, surpassing the ethical boundaries of their own countries by doing abroad what is forbidden in their own country. After all, there are 15,000 couples in Germany who do this every year. About 6000 of them in Ukraine which has now become a thriving surrogacy gold mine in Europe.
The company BioTexCom alone reports of 600 pregnant women. Daily 3 children are given birth to with this company, Kelly mentions.

The company BioTexCom alone reports of 600 pregnant women.
Daily 3 children are given birth to with this company, Kelly mentions.

So, “the war not only reveals the ugly sides of human nature, but also the grotesque face of what is subsumed under the term ‘surrogacy’. A trivializing term really, because no mother is borrowed in this case, just a woman who is literally being degraded to a mere incubator. They are not wanted as mothers, says Kelle with concern.

“Surrogacy is human trafficking,” Kelly warns, “The aftermath is nothing but collateral damage which happens once you start trading children like objects on the world market. It is considered an achievement of civilization and a worldwide agreement that organ trafficking is ethically reprehensible and forbidden – one reason being also to prevent poor people from self-exploitation. So, buying a kidney on the world market is collectively outlawed, whereas buying a whole child, on the other hand, is being praised in the tabloid press as a modern type of starting a family among heterosexual and gay celebrity couples.”

One thing is certain: these children should be helped. The “parents” and clinics, on the other hand, who profit from the poverty crisis of the individual women and families, should be reported and punished.

But that’s not all! Kelle doesn’t predict anything good from this for Germany as well when the government’s “traffic light coalition” will succeed in pushing through its goals of legalizing “altruistic” and “non-commercial” surrogacy. In Germany, surrogacy is still prohibited. The Embryo Protection Act prevents egg donation as well as embryo donation and surrogacy.

And you don’t know how long this will still be the case, Kelle says. The flowery theory of the current government’s goal is that no money flows between the ordering person and the surrogate mother, and that it would all just be an act of charity and a good deed for the benefit of desperate people who want to have children. Kelly describes, the emotional example of a sister bearing a child for her sister or the mother carrying a child for her son or daughter is eagerly used. That way it stays in the family, so to speak.

But reality looks different.
Other countries’ experience shows that the altruistic option is
the beginning and the door-opener for the commercial market.

And the altruistic option isn’t non-commercial really. The fertility clinics are paid substantially for it. According to Kelle, the only person who bears the entire health risk as well as the child, and yet receives absolutely nothing in return, is the surrogate mother herself. But this is called ‘modern’ and, according to neo-feminist interpretation, “self-determined female reproductive work”. What a mockery for every woman!

Shouldn’t the project of Germany’s “traffic light” - coalition be quickly and decisively stopped? Will the poor be exploited in our country, too? To enrich oneself from their misery or to idealize the exploitation of the female body under the guise of altruism; both is simply unethical and inhumane. Unless an EU Ethics Commission does not stop this aberration of child trafficking, it legitimizes it.

from abu/avr
Sources/Links:
https://paz.de/artikel/bestellt-und-nicht-abgeholt-a6536.html