Surrogate mothers: new kind of biological service or social feat?

“Seeking a surrogate mother” and “looking for a woman to bear a child under contract” are advertisements daily increasing in number on the Internet. The same is true of the number of families who, for one reason or another, cannot have their own children. Today, every fifth family in the world cannot have children. Despite the obvious changes in our mentality, attitudes toward alternative ways of having offspring, such as in vitro fertilization and contract motherhood, are quite mixed. Due to the multitude of moral, ethical, and religious aspects involved, some countries, notably, France and Germany, ban any activities in this area, while courts in Canada and the United Kingdom are barred from considering claims dealing with artificial insemination. The Christian religion eyes such manipulations with donor gamete cells with disapproval, saying it breaks up the integrity of an individual’s personality and destroys the deep emotional relationship between mother and child. To support this view, modern scientists have found that a four-month embryo in the womb can already identify his mother, reacting to any changes in her mood, in fact, sharing such moods.

In Ukraine, surrogate motherhood like other revolutionary technologies in the sphere of reproductive medicine is linked with the name of Professor Fedir Dakhno, Director of the Institute of Reproductive Medicine in Kyiv. He told The Day that the first child borne by a surrogate mother appeared in Ukraine in 1980, with the sister of a client serving as a mother. Since that time this way of having children has been increasingly in the public eye but it is still apparently too early to say that contract motherhood is widespread among childless couples or is likely to become so. According to Dr. Dakhno, these are merely isolated cases. Perhaps for this reason there is still no bank of substitute mothers in Ukraine, unlike, for example, the United States with its huge database on the donors of gamete cells, and would- be parents can choose donors based on their ethnic origin, religion, or looks. In Ukraine, the donor search is mainly the client’s responsibility, although the institute staff is quite helpful, looking for substitute mothers among relatives and acquaintances.

Some scientists and experts believe that surrogate motherhood is not widespread in Ukraine due to material reasons, not moral, because it is much cheaper for a childless couple to adopt a child with dubious heredity than to cough up fifteen hundred dollars for insemination and three times as much in pay and upkeep for the contract mom. Incidentally, the interests of the contract mother’s family are also involved. True, the awareness that one’s wife is carrying somebody else’s child for somebody else’s family could be quite painful to a substitute mother’s husband and other family members.

In accordance with the tacit rules, only women with children up to 35 years old can become surrogate mothers and this decreases several times the risk that they might eventually want to keep children for themselves. A relative is apparently the best surrogate mother, but the whole affair can have curious twists. For example, if a woman gave birth to a child conceived from the gamete of her own daughter, her kinship to the child is absolutely unclear as she can be viewed as its mother, grandmother, or both.

According to a survey published in the bioethics section of www.booksite.ru, depending on the age and location of sample, 18 to 28% of respondents regard artificial insemination as immoral, with 24% unable to give their opinion citing their lack of knowledge on the issue. Conversely, most medical doctors (61%) are convinced that, given the pathology in women that prevents them from having children, the in vitro method is best. Domestic psychologists call substitute motherhood a moral break for society. “Westerners are by far less emotional than we, and yet the practice can become a tragedy for both the client mothers and surrogates as there is no knowing whether the latter’s nascent motherly feelings will not eventually get the upper hand,” says Natalia Bastun, Ph.D. in psychology. In her view, by promoting surrogate motherhood society is breeding morally unhealthy generation through offering a new kind of biological service or modified prostitution. Still, it will be impossible to stop the upcoming wave, Dr. Bastun believes, advising to accept it, adapting ourselves to this reality. Meanwhile, Liubov Bevzenko, Ph.D. in sociology, maintains that surrogate motherhood is linked with sociological factors and should be considered within the cultural context. “While substitute motherhood was absolutely unacceptable to traditional culture, for the post-modernist one, with its lack of value judgments and pragmatism, this is not the case,” she says. Incidentally, the Bible refers to cases of surrogate mothers when the childless weaker sex in order to save face used their female slaves to conceive children by their husbands, with the legal wives holding up newborns immediately after birth to prove their motherly status.

Fedir Dakhno has an absolutely clear position on morality of this method. He believes that only those women who bring up children deserve to be called mothers, but those women who, for altruistic reasons, participate in the arrangement should be viewed as heroes and materially rewarded by the state. However, as confirmed by actual episodes, the cases of altruism can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For some women substitute motherhood has virtually become a highly paid job. In her interview with the Lviv-based Vysoky zamok newspaper, Anna, a manager from Simferopol, admitted that she agreed to act as a surrogate mother exclusively because she was financially in dire straits. After she had divorced her husband, all she wanted was to prove to him that she could earn her daily bread on her own. But she is scared of seeing the child now as it gives her much pain, she confesses.

It should be noted that in the Institute of Reproductive Medicine there have been no cases of surrogate mothers’ refusal to hand children over to their client parents. As it is, it is extremely difficult for a contract mother to claim her motherhood in court. The supplement to the law of Ukraine On the Transplantation of Organs and Tissues spells out that parents who have resorted to reproduction procedures enjoy full paternal rights with regard to any children born as a result of such procedures. And the recently adopted new Family Code specifies that in cases of implanting embryos conceived by parents in bodies of other women, the former are parents of such children. Still, clients continue to be worried lest the maternal instinct could win over in the last minute and a surrogate mother might flee the deceived genetic parents. Anna said that she had to reassure the genetic mother daily, saying she would not run away with the child.

In the face of all the mixed opinions, it can be assumed that surrogate motherhood will develop, regardless of what the church or the Joneses might say. For one’s own child, even from the psychological point of view, is several times closer to parents than any adopted one. However, the psychological trauma due to the child’s unconventional birth leaves its mark on both parents and the contract mother. Still, one cannot blame women for their craving to become mothers. And if the in vitro method can create a miracle for some, it has the right to exist.