Inside a Ukrainian baby factory

War has destroyed much of the Ukrainian economy. But one key industry --- delivering babies via surrogates — continues amid the epic strife. By Ilya Gridneff, Emily Schultheis and Dmytro Drabyk 07/23/2023 07:00 AM EDT

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KYIV, Ukraine --- When Tanya, a 45-year-old woman living in Los Angeles, paid $10,000 and sent two embryos to a surrogacy firm in Ukraine hoping to build a family six years ago, she says she never expected the uncertainty and heartbreak the process would bring.

Tanya desperately wanted a child but found out she would be unable to conceive herself. After discovering how expensive surrogacy in the U.S. can be, she and her husband began pursuing options abroad --- and came across the Kyiv-based company BioTexCom. Tanya’s parents were originally from Odesa, so she felt there was something fitting about her future child being born in Ukraine.

Once the process began with BioTexCom in fall 2017, however, Tanya had an uneasy feeling. After sending her embryos, she says, she was told they would be implanted in a surrogate almost immediately --- a timeline that didn’t fit with all the research Tanya had done into the surrogacy process. When, a few days later, the firm told her the embryo transfer had been unsuccessful and provided minimal information about why, she says, she suspected something was off. Tana paid $10,000 and sent two embryos to a surrogacy firm in Ukraine hoping to build a family. | WELT

Her husband was in Kyiv for work a few weeks later and decided to stop by the clinic to see if he could get some answers.He introduced himself to a clinic staffer, who immediately thanked him for donating their embryos to another couple. He was floored: Was this what had happened when the firm told them the process was unsuccessful?“Obviously, that’s when, you know, crap hit the fan,” she said. At that point, she added, BioTexCom stopped answering her messages and they never received her embryos back.

The account of Tanya and her husband was one of multiple complaints that reporters for POLITICO and the German news outlet WELT uncovered in an investigation into BioTexCom, arguably the world’s most popular surrogacy agency. Complainants were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. One German couple said BioTexCom mixed up their surrogate twins with another couple’s pair, forcing them to exchange the babies at a secret rendezvous in Germany.

Another German woman said her uncertainty and stress after BioTexCom never returned all her embryos after she canceled plans for a surrogacy in Ukraine. WELT also spoke to former prosecutors, surrogates and advocates in Ukraine who raised allegations of BioTexCom’s lack of proper care for the medical needs and complications of women who bore the babies. They say cases were not pursued in the country’s sometimes chaotic legal system even though the company’s founder confirmed that he was placed under house arrest as part of a pretrial investigation.

Tanya, too, has been thwarted in her efforts to initiate an investigation into her embryos. Tanya and her husband remain anxious that their embryos may have been implanted and a child born and given to another couple. Although she has filed a complaint with the international crime agency Interpol, more than five years later she still doesn’t know what really happened. (Interpol did not reply to a request for comment from POLITICO.)

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/23/ukraine-surrogates-fertility-00104913