The New York Times Magazine 27She and Antonio began working with Deliv-
ering Dreams in 2021, traveling to Ukraine for
six weeks to conceive embryos for implantation
in a surrogate. They were thrilled to get to know
via Zoom a surrogate they chose. But that young
woman’s hormone levels at the expected time of
implantation indicated that the odds were not
favorable for the pregnancy. Almost numb, at that
point, to failure, they resolved to try again with
surrogacy — but they realized that if they did
move forward, they needed to detach as much
as possible from the process. They chose a surro-
gate named Lilia but declined to build a relation-
ship, trying to limit any emotional involvement
or investment or even hope in the outcome, for
the protection of their own mental health.
‘‘Your surrogate mother Lilia is PREGNANT!’’
they learned in an email from Hrytsiv on Nov. 22.
‘‘Congratulations!’’ Marilyn wrote back immedi-
ately: ‘‘We will keep her health and well-being,
and baby’s also, in our prayers.’’ Antonio wrote
as well, to thank the team: ‘‘This is the best news
we’ve had in years.’’
On Dec. 14, Marilyn was walking down a
hospital hall on a day shift in Berlin, Wis., when
an email popped up on her iPhone. It was from
Hrytsiv with a dire subject-heading: ‘‘ICU — criti-cal change in condition of Lilia’s health.’’ For rea-
sons that were never clear to Marilyn, Lilia had
started bleeding, and her life was at risk, which
required the termination of the pregnancy. Mar-
ilyn ducked into the bathroom to try to main-
tain her composure, then raced to her car, in the
parking lot, where she burst into tears and called
Antonio. ‘‘I can’t go back to work,’’ she told him.
Even worse than the loss of the pregnancy was
the fear that a woman’s life was now in danger
on their behalf.
After the surrogate recovered, Marilyn and
Antonio decided to try one more time with
another woman, and on Feb. 22, they were told by
the agency that a young mother named Olya had
just received a positive result on a pregnancy test.
They chose not to build a relationship with Olya,
but Kersch-Kibler sent them a photo of her, smil-
ing sweetly, her daughter, then 6, solemn-faced
in the crook of her arm. They had already been
advocating for her to be moved to Lviv; but whenRussia attacked two days later, Olya was still liv-
ing in her hometown, in the region of Sumy, in
the northeast of the country. The town was safe,
far enough from the front; but in order to get
to Kyiv, and then to Lviv, she’d have to travel
through more dangerous areas that had been
subjected to heavy shelling.
That was when the insistent emails started
coming in full force from Marilyn and Antonio
to Kersch-Kibler: Wouldn’t it become only more
dangerous the longer she stayed? They were
watching millions of Ukrainians make the fl ight
to safety on the news every day — why couldn’t
Kersch-Kibler arrange that for Olya?
In mid-March, as Russian bombing contin-
ued around Sumy, Olya understood, through the
agency, that the intended parents were eager for
her to go to Lviv. She did not know them, which
pained her — she would have liked, during those
fi rst few weeks, to have their support, the sweet
emails back and forth she enjoyed during a pre-
vious surrogacy, a chance to tell them what she
had done that day with her own daughter.
She appreciated their concern for her safety,
but at home, she was comfortable — the air-raid
sirens rang in her city only the fi rst day of the war,
and she heard no shelling. She read only light localnews and kept her television viewing to the car-
toons she watched with her daughter. The shops
were open. Her friends were all staying put. When-
ever she thought about leaving, she wasn’t sure
she could summon the nerve — especially as the
mayor advised against it. Without a green corridor,
she had no intention of leaving, she told me, on
Zoom from her house, a Hello Kitty calendar in
the background. Olya was a single mother, who
had steady work as a cleaning woman but turned
to surrogacy for the sake of her daughter, to make
sure she could keep her well fed and clothed, in a
home that was cozy and comfortable. Her daugh-
ter occasionally showed up onscreen to smile
shyly and put her head on her mother’s shoulder.
Olya had not just her pregnancy to protect, but
her daughter too.
On March 17, she received a call from Liubov,
who explained that she’d been researching
drivers from the various Facebook pages, with
names like ‘‘Escape FromMarilyn and Antonio Hanchard,
intended parents to the baby carried
by Olya, in Rothschild, Wis., in April.(Continued on Page )d therefore their own future child.
Photograph by Erinn Springer for The New York Times