The some country that tuned a blind eye to while the nuns who ran the Madgelian Laundries buried babies in unmarked graves are now turning a blind eye to babies being created in war zones while their birth mothers are being exploited
The human rights watchdog says our new health act allows for the trafficking of women and babies, but the health minister is ignoring its wa
Ireland’s new surrogacy law is legalising the sale of children
The human rights watchdog says our new health act allows for the trafficking of women and babies, but the health minister is ignoring its warning
Brenda Power Sunday September 22 2024
Despite the war, Ukraine’s baby factories are still flourishing. One of the biggest global players in the commercial surrogacy business is the Swiss-registered BioTexCom, which controls 70 per cent of the Ukrainian market and a quarter of the global business. Commercial surrogacy is estimated to have pumped €1.5 billion into the Ukrainian economy since 2018 alone, and the international market for surrogate babies, with an estimated value of €12.5 billion in 2022, has been growing at a rate of 25 per cent a year.
About half of Ukraine’s estimated 2,500 annual surrogate pregnancies are carried out through BioTexCom and, in the first 11 months of the war, the company reported that about 600 couples had travelled to the country to use its services. At approximately €50,000 per surrogacy, that means BioTexCom took in about €30 million in that period alone. A Kyiv clinic reported last year that the war hadn’t stopped Irish couples travelling for surrogacy services, and customers from Germany, Britain and Italy have also ensured that business remains brisk in these baby factories.
Under the new Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Act 2024, which passed all stages in the Oireachtas in May and was signed into law in July, Ireland is the first EU country to legalise commercial surrogacy. That’s not me saying this, by the way. That’s the view of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), in its report on human trafficking published last week.
The commission is “concerned” that section 8 of the act, which covers international surrogacy, effectively extends the Irish legislation “to a practice not permitted in any other EU state, in an area marred with increasing human trafficking”. It also fears that this new Irish law “may thwart other countries’ efforts to protect their own citizens from trafficking and reproductive exploitation”. We are, in other words, about to become legally complicit in the trafficking of women for the purposes of providing babies to Irish couples.
The commission has written twice to Stephen Donnelly, the health minister, pointing out that the law does not fulfil the state’s obligations under EU law to prevent the trafficking of women for exploitative surrogacy. At the date of drafting its report, the commission said, no response had been received.
The exploitation of vulnerable women for surrogacy, the commission says, is “one of the most concerning, novel and emerging forms of trafficking”. Yet we have enacted a law that legalises what the UN special rapporteur on human rights has called “the sale of children”.
The new law creates a “double standard”, according to the commission, whereby domestic, “altruistic” surrogacy is tightly regulated but the international market will be subject to “light touch” regulation. There will be no way to ensure that other states will comply with the requirements of the act, for example that the surrogate mother is paid only “reasonable expenses” and is allowed a 21-day period to withdraw her consent to the arrangement.
This will certainly put Ukrainian law at odds with the new Irish position, since one Ukrainian clinic boasts on its 2024 page: “Legal requirements are not strict. Ukraine surrogacy law is clear that the gestational carrier has no parental rights over the child and she has no ability to keep the child.” This, in theory, will make Ukrainian surrogacy deals illegal.
And the idea that the foreign surrogate mother and the surrogacy agencies should receive only “reasonable expenses” is dismissed as disingenuous nonsense by the commission: “It is unlikely that a woman would undertake a pregnancy on behalf of a stranger from another country without being offered a significant incentive. It is a fiction to suggest otherwise, but that appears to be the basis on which the legislation is to operate.”
The “reasonable expenses” provision might, the commission warns, encourage Irish couples to seek surrogacy in poor and underdeveloped countries where surrogacy is permissible, including Kenya, Malaysia and Nigeria, and where they can get away with paying buttons to the surrogate mother on the basis of comparative economic value. And that would amount to a commercial advantage, making the surrogacy illegal — not that the new law will be able to do anything to prevent it.
That Ukrainian clinic (“We build families with love”) also offers “good genetic testing facilities and gender selection, just in case wishful parents want high success rates”. Here’s how the commission addresses this delicately phrased service: “While there is no large-scale data, surrogate mothers have reported undergoing forced abortions of foetuses unwanted by clients … There are also consistent reports from India, Nepal, Thailand and now Ukraine of client parents abandoning unwanted children, particularly those with disabilities.”
Just recently, says the commission, eight people were arrested at the Mediterranean Fertility Institute in Greece, which had advertised its services and its “excellent surrogate support programme” on the Growing Families website. Vulnerable women had been lured from Albania and Georgia on false pretences and “forced to undergo hormonal treatment, egg extraction and insemination for surrogacy”. Or, to put it another way, they were abducted and impregnated against their will so that wealthy western couples could buy their babies.
And that, in a nutshell, is what our human rights watchdog has been trying to warn the minister for health about; this is what it is telling him will be the consequence of his new law on surrogacy. And he has been ignoring the warnings and refusing to respond to the correspondence. For some reason, this chilling chapter in the IHREC report was also ignored in media coverage of its launch last week. We are about to legalise commercial surrogacy, in a market where women are being trafficked and raped to maintain a global business worth in excess of €20 billion annually. You may well support that measure, but you should understand it first.
Transparency is the best weapon
Gardai were called to a brawl this month outside a supermarket in west Dublin. Within hours, social media sites were buzzing with claims that the protagonist was an immigrant male, armed with a knife attacking schoolchildren — pictures purporting to be the violent attacker also appeared online. Later in the week, gardai issued a statement denying that the incident involved an adult male or a foreign national — all the participants were school students and Irish nationals, and the incident was contained within the school. Not that any of the online agitators believed a word of it and for that, arguably, the gardai have only themselves to blame.
Last week, gardai applied for reporting restrictions preventing the identification of a man accused of attempting to abduct a five-year-old boy during a party at a Dublin apartment building. Because of “the current climate in the country”, a garda told the court, and “the sensitive nature of the case”, it was preferable that the accused should not be identified. The judge at that hearing agreed, citing the “social media-fuelled climate we live in”.
How to tell the country that the accused was an immigrant, then, without telling the country that the accused was an immigrant, notionally putting every non-national in the dock and guaranteeing heightened interest in the case. When a number of media organisations quite properly challenged this decision, another judge partially lifted the restriction to name the individual but not his address. The obligation to dispense justice in public is a pillar of democracy, and is also a crucial element of the social contract; the public should also be able to trust that the prosecutions of both immigrants and nationals are being reported on as far as possible.
Social media is already awash with unfounded claims that the traditional media, gardai and the courts are conspiring to conceal the number of immigrants and asylum seekers before the courts. But at a time when transparency and reason are the best weapons against extremist agitation, unnecessarily constraining court reporting restrictions can only serve to alarm even the most moderate observers
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Couple overcomes 6 miscarriages and 2 bouts of cancer to fulfill dream of having kids
Chad and Stacey Baker, from Iowa, struggled for years to have children
Over 8 years, the couple suffered 6 marriages and Chad had 2 bouts with cancer
But thanks to 2 different surrogates, they were able to fulfill dream of having kids
Now the couple wants to offer guidance and support for other similar families
Chad and Stacey Baker went through a monumental struggle to have children.
Over the course of eight years, the couple from Des Moines, Iowa, suffered through six miscarriages and two bouts of cancer that nearly killed Chad.
But now, thanks to grueling chemotherapy and gestational surrogacy, Chad is in remission - and they are the parents of two kids: Gavin, two, and Hadley, four months.
Neither birth would have been possible without the selfless acts of two separate surrogate mothers.
The Bakers were married in 2004 and suffered their first miscarriage in 2007, but their doctor reassured them that they were not alone.
Between 10 and 25 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage - and as many as 80 percent happen in the first 12 weeks.
By 2010 the couple had not only suffered their third miscarriage, but Chad's two rounds of testicular cancer threatened not only his ability to father children but also his very life.
Stacey told : 'There was a lot of depression. All that was going on in our life was cancer and infertility — for years.'
When 2013 came, Stacey and Chad officially decided to end all attempts at having children.
Around this time, they hired Summer Marnin, a single mother raising two daughters, to dog-sit their black Labrador, Daisy.
Touched by the Bakers' trying story, Marnin texted Stacey one day asking: 'How old is too old to be a surrogate?'
Soon afterwards, Marnin became the Bakers' gestational carrier.
Unlike a traditional surrogate where the carrier's own egg is part of the pregnancy and the child is genetically hers, a gestational carrier is implanted with another's egg.
The Bakers froze three embryos for the process. When Marnin went in for her in vitro fertilization, she decided to be implanted with two embryos rather than one. She became pregnant with twins - a boy and a girl.
Marnin ended up miscarrying the female twin, but delivered a healthy baby boy in August 2014.
'When the doctor came in and finally did tell us that we were having a boy, there was like this 30 seconds of smiling at each other,' Stacey said.
'But then the rest was just grief. And so what should have been the best day of our lives — we had been waiting for this for eight years — you know, a healthy baby boy. For eight years, we had been waiting for that. We came home, and we cried all night.'
Marnin, at the time, told THV 11: 'It for sure made it all worth it when I looked over to my right and Stacey had him in the rocking chair and had her son in her arms...that was my favorite part.'
While the Bakers settled in to raise their new baby, they had a burning question in the back of their minds: what to do about the third embryo they had stored.
They didn't feel comfortable donating and approached Marnin to ask if she was interested in carrying their second child.
She ultimately declined.
A little ways down the road, Chad said he was discussing the decision he and Stacey had to make about the embryo with his stylist. The stylist ended up mentioning the situation to a friend - Tiffany Kiernan.
Kiernan had told her husband after having their own two kids that, if possible, she wanted to help other couples have children.
Kiernan told THV 11 she was looking for 'somebody that was going to love and appreciate their kids as much as I do. And be a good parent. I didn't want to have a baby for someone that wasn't going to give the love that I would give to my own child.'
The Bakers met Kiernan and her husband for a three-and-a-half hour coffee date. They clicked.
Hadley arrived three weeks ahead of schedule, weighing barely more than five pounds. At her two-week checkup, she ranked among the lowest one percent in weight.
Upon hearing Hadley's first cries, Kiernan said she didn't feel any regret at giving up the baby - just fulfillment.
She said: 'It made me feel like I made the right decision, that everything was meant to be, and it was perfect.'
The Bakers say they've always been rather private people, but were coaxed into public view at the chance of their story offering some guidance or moral support to others struggling with infertility or cancer.
Stacey, who had to use her vacation time as maternity leave, is currently pushing for adoptive and foster parents to be granted the same family leave as birth moms.
But the couple says talking openly about their lives is what led them to find their surrogate mothers.
Stacey said: 'We always say if we hadn't talked about it, Hadley for sure wouldn't be here. We would've never found Tiffany if we would've kept quiet.'
And they're not keeping any secret from their children about how they came into this world - Marnin's photo hangs in Gavin's bedroom. Kiernan is on Hadley's wall.
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Die Reportage begleitet ein deutsches Paar, das in die Ukraine reist, um sein Kind abzuholen. Filmemacherin Bettina Wobst hinterfragt: Wie funktioniert dieses Geschäft mit dem Babyglück?
