The recent Russian-Ukrainian conflict is no longer a regular visitor to the hot search for news, but from time to time there are some news that destroys the three views, which makes people open their eyes and lament the despicable nature of human nature.
In the past few days, there has been such a message:
According to the New York Times reported on March 9 local time, the legal counsel of a surrogacy agency in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, said that the center has a number of surrogate mothers who have fled Kiev due to the turmoil, but have arranged for them to return near the due date, because many countries around Ukraine do not allow surrogacy, and not giving birth in Ukraine will cause "a lot of problems in paperwork and (with customers) to establish parent-child relations."
Simply put, it is to force those surrogate mothers to risk being killed by mistake and return to the war zone to give birth to the children of the rich.
In order to ensure that the child can be born normally, the agency has transformed an air raid shelter into a temporary delivery room, which provides a safe area for surrogate mothers to escape the war, and of course, will strictly guard them to prevent them from fleeing Ukraine.
Screenshot of the New York Post report
I don't know why, when I see this news, I will think of a sentence in "Red Rock":
The old society turned people into ghosts, and the new society turned ghosts into people
01
When a country's economy is in decline, some countries choose to work for development for the whole people, while others choose to exploit the weaker.
Ukraine is the second.
Obviously, it is a country larger than France, and it obviously has fertile land and industrial resources left by the Soviet Union, but Ukraine abandons the bottom line and lets women shoulder the burden when the economy declines.
In 2006, Ukraine changed its law to turn prostitution from a crime to a "misconduct", and even if caught by the police, it was only a symbolic sexual intercourse fine.
Such measures fueled Ukraine's pornography industry, making Ukraine a "brothel in Europe."
This has also indirectly made Ukrainian women victims of international human trafficking, and many girls have been trafficked to the Middle East and Southern Europe to live a miserable life.
Seeing the economic growth that women sold their bodies for, Ukrainian politicians began to think of ways to extract the value of women, and they set their sights on the womb.
As one of the few countries on earth where surrogacy has been legalized, Ukraine has the title of "European Womb".
Compared to the high price of more than $100,000 (about 630,000 yuan) in the United States, surrogacy in Ukraine is usually only $40,000 to 70,000 (about 250,000 to 440,000 yuan).
Almost half as cheap, it impresses the rich.
In peacetime, every year many people use tourism as an excuse to go to Ukraine to choose the ideal womb.
Air raid shelters for surrogate mothers and babies
According to statistics, more than 2,000 surrogate babies are born in Ukraine every year.
Surrogate mothers, on the other hand, risk complications and death, and can only earn about $10,000 each time.
02
As the conflict situation worsens, the situation faced by surrogate mothers becomes even more difficult.
A few days ago, the British "Daily Mail" in a report detailed the dilemma faced by Ukrainian surrogate mothers:
An American couple tried their best to "rescue" two premature surrogate children brought by the surrogate mother, and the surrogate mother had to return to Ukraine to retrieve her own child after being escorted to Poland.
Couples who purchase surrogacy services go to the surrogacy agency to pick up their children
Sasha, 46, and his wife, who is two years his senior, are from the United States, and the couple has been trying for years and has been childless.
In 2021, they matched Katerina, a Ukrainian surrogate mother, through an institution to help them conceive a baby.
Through technical means, Katerina became pregnant with a pair of twin boys, but in the third trimester, Katerina had a series of serious complications and had to undergo an emergency caesarean section.
When the Sashas learned the news, it was the day before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, seven weeks before their due date, and the two children in their stomachs were only 7 months old.
Although worried about the health of the children, Sasha could only accept the fact that she was born prematurely, agreeing to Katerina's early caesarean section.
It is also ironic that the surrogate mother, as the mother, cannot decide the birth of the child in the face of danger.
After the birth of two children, conflict broke out, and the medical conditions in Kiev could not meet the needs of the two premature babies, and even the milk powder suitable for the premature babies could not be bought.
Sasha went to everyone he knew to help buy milk powder and supplies for the child.
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict was moving very fast, the hospital had no bomb shelters, and at night Katerina would take her two children to the basement of the church opposite the hospital to avoid air raids.
Sasha, on the other hand, made contact, first transferring the children to a larger state hospital in Kiev and then contacting a non-profit organization to get the children out of Ukraine.
He found 12 people fleeing Ukraine with twins, including drivers, translators, nurses and a rescue team.
On February 28, Sasha and her party picked up Katerina and her two children and fled Ukraine, and when the children reached a certain weight, they could take them back to the United States.
But Katerina, who managed to escape, had to return to Ukraine because her own 6-year-old son was still trapped in Lviv.
In Ukraine, there are many more such stories.
Wealthy buyers can do whatever it takes to take their children away, while surrogate mothers can only pray for peace in the midst of war.
03
"With history as a mirror, we can know the rise and fall; with people as a mirror, we can see the gains and losses."
Today, the tragedy of Ukraine is laid barely there, and some people cannot take this as a warning.
Over there, the Ukrainian surrogate mother is still in deep trouble, and some people here have called for "legal surrogacy to be allowed if conditions permit.".
Although the Internet and the media have been publicizing the harm of surrogacy to women and ethics, there are still many people who support the "legalization of surrogacy".
Although I don't agree with these people's views, I can understand why they think so.
People who have experienced storms in society can probably understand a sentence:
No one in this world can truly empathize.
When facing social problems, everyone will think and solve problems from their own perspective.
For those who live well and men who are not fertile subjects, it is difficult to truly understand the impact of surrogacy on women.
They see the exploitation of women by surrogacy and the hidden ethical crisis behind it.
They can only see that surrogacy allows powerful, status, and resourceful people to have their own children without bearing the risk of childbearing; allowing some women who are unable to work to earn a relatively high income from surrogacy.
But they don't know what a child born in October means to a pregnant mother, how much risk and crisis the child will bring to the pregnant mother from conception to birth, and what kind of disaster the value of women's fertility will bring to a poor, weak and low-level woman.
They probably can't imagine that once they let go of childbearing, countless women will be coaxed, or trafficked, or forced to live, become surrogate mothers, like the hens of chicken farms, locked up in a cage to give birth.
When a woman is alienated into a uterus, the child will also become a commodity.
Where do those children with birth defects, those who are returned, go?
As for those who advocate the legalization and standardization of surrogacy, the realization of the fertility aspirations of the infertile women's group, and the guarantee of the rights of pregnant mothers.
There is a passage in Marx's Capital that has been quoted many times:
If there is a profit of twenty percent, capital will be ready to move;
If there is a profit of fifty percent, capital will take risks;
If there is a hundred percent profit, capital dares to risk hanging its head;
If there is three hundred percent profit, capital dares to trample on all the laws of the world.
For the sake of profit, people can really not treat others as people!
Trafficking in drugs above 50g is punishable by death, but there are still people who are willing to take risks and know the law.
For the sake of money, life is gone, and what is the binding force of the most stringent laws?
The society after the legalization of surrogacy will be a hell on earth for most low-level women!
Hopefully, never see this day.