The New York Times Magazine - USA (2022-05-08)

The New York Times Magazine 25

Ukraine, which has the additional benefi t of clear
guidelines that explicitly recognize the intended
parents as holding all legal rights to the child,
with their names immediately listed as the par-
ents on the birth certifi cate, provided they can
show they have exhausted other means of carry-
ing a baby to term on their own or a pregnancy
would put the intended mother at risk.
Ukraine does not allow gay couples or single
parents to contract with surrogates, so would-be
parents in either category have often turned to
Russia. There, single parents have hired sur-
rogates, and gay couples have found a path to
parenthood by having only one parent sign the
contract; the other subsequently adopts the child
in their home countries, explains Nidhi Desai,
the director of the American Academy of Adop-
tion and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys.
Since various countries have restricted inter-
national surrogacy, agencies have rushed in
to take advantage of Ukraine’s relatively well
regulated market. One Ukrainian embryolo-
gist has estimated that before the war, rough-
ly 3,200 implantations were performed in the
country each year — creating, through the fees
and also the associated tourism, a new, thriving

economic sector. Typically, parents who opt for
surrogacy fl y into the country and work with a
local clinic, conceiving embryos that are sub-
sequently implanted in the wombs of Ukrainian
women whom they have interviewed (usually
by video call) or chosen from descriptions the
agency provides. In some, but not all, cases, the
parents choose to build a relationship with the
woman carrying their child, texting regularly,
even fl ying in to visit her; almost always, the
parents fl y back into the country nine months
later, either to be there for the birth, if all parties
agree, or to receive their newborn and take the
child back home.
Even under the best of circumstances, the
arrangement can be fraught. Now, Ukraine’s
surrogates are working under the worst of
circumstances, forcing everyone involved —
agencies, intended parents and surrogates — to
make decisions based on imperfect informa-
tion regarding matters of life and death. The
starkness of war has laid bare the many ethical

tensions that exist in surrogacy arrangements,

casting into bold relief the power dynamics that

underlie a contract in which a woman signs over

the whole of her physical self.

For Kersch-Kibler, Delivering Dreams is the

latest in a series of businesses she started in the

region in her 20s. In 1991, right out of college,

she traveled to St. Petersburg, where she fell

into the booming real estate market and soon

became a developer. She returned to the United

States in 2002, and eventually adopted a baby

from an orphanage in Kharkiv, an experience that

inspired her to start her own business facilitating

adoptions from Ukraine. That business shifted to

surrogacy when new rules in that country and the

United States restricted those adoptions.

In February, as Russia bombarded Ukraine,

many of the intended parents were insistent that

Kersch-Kibler exert her will to make sure that

their surrogates leave Ukraine altogether — to

leave Lviv and go to Poland, for the surrogates’

safety and the safety of the children they car-

ried. The emails came in every day; but it had

been hard enough to persuade the women to

go to Lviv. Now that the war was on, many were

reluctant to abandon their country and travel

even farther from their families. ‘‘You cannot

put her in a trunk and force her to go over the

border,’’ Kersch-Kibler says she told an intend-

ed parent. ‘‘That is human traffi cking.’’ Some

of the intended parents were pressing for the

families of their surrogate to be moved to safety,

and were frustrated by why it hadn’t happened

sooner; according to Kersch-Kibler, some sur-

rogates felt their children were in less danger

if they stayed where they were than if they took

to the road.

Kersch-Kibler faced another logistical con-

cern: Surrogacy was not legal or straightforward

in many countries near Ukraine, like Poland and

the Czech Republic. If she moved the women

to Poland and any of them went into labor and

delivered there, the surrogate would be consid-

ered the child’s mother. The intended parents

would have to undergo lengthy legal proceed-

ings to adopt their child. If they moved the

women outside the country, they could always

try to move them back into Lviv or elsewhere in

Ukraine for the delivery; but sending a woman

nearing her due date across the border was not

easy or desirable.

Kersch-Kibler and Hrytsiv, her senior employ-

ee, talked frequently, weighing the various

considerations. Hrytsiv helped navigate the

considerable bureaucracy involved with interna-

tional surrogacy. A mother of two herself, Hryt-

siv had green eyes that could convey helpless

innocence or steely resolve, depending on which

approach she thought would be more eff ective

under the circumstances. But now the women

had to work through the sorts of logistics that

they never before imagined they would need to

think about, the most pressing question being:

At what point would they have no choice but to

move the surrogates across the border?

On March 11, after Russia bombed two airfi elds

to the north and south of Lviv, Kersch-Kibler sud-

denly had clarity: It was too dangerous for the

surrogates to stay where they were. What they

had assumed about Lviv — that it would remain

untouched — was no longer a given. It was impos-

sible to predict where the Russian military would

strike next and how aggressively.

Scrambling to rent apartments in Krakow,

Poland, they resolved to move four surrogates

that evening. By then, Maryna had been checked

into a maternity hospital in Lviv and placed on

bed rest after the doctors had deemed her at

high risk for premature labor. This meant that

Hrytsiv, who was from that city, would remain

there with her, rather than go as she’d hoped

to her family home in the relative safety of the

mountains. Kersch-Kibler would be in Krakow to

oversee the transition, but in the meantime, she

promoted a surrogate mother who was already

doing some administrative work for the agency

to a more senior role, as a surrogate coordina-

tor. Liubov, who was seven months pregnant

herself, was now in charge of overseeing and

assisting her peers.

Liubov was management; but like many of

the other women, she was upset with the agen-

cy’s decision to move them across the border.

‘‘They said they wouldn’t make us leave — but

then they decided for us,’’ she said, a few days

Many surrogates didn’t want to abandon their country and travel even farther from their families.