Ethics Of Surrogacy: The Case Of Baby "Luna" Abandoned In Ukraine – Worldcrunch

Surrogacy is still considered quite controversial, especially in Italy where a story has made headlines after would-be parents renounced a baby born in Ukraine. The author says we must face the ethical (and other) questions rather than dismiss the practice as “uterus for rent.”
Luna arriving at Milan’s airport
-Analysis-
ROME — The story of the surrogate child born in Kiev, and then abandoned by its would-be Italian parents, is filled with deep sadness. No child should ever be let go.
And yet, it happens. It happens when a woman decides to give birth anonymously, and the baby is then given up for adoption. Or when a child is placed in temporary foster care, but then never returns to the family of origin. It happens with some premature-born babies who, after being kept alive with the help of sophisticated therapies, will never be picked up by their parents because of a disability. It even happens with adoption: those rare occasions when the kid is returned, putting him or her through a dramatic “double abandonment.”
Little is said about these stories, either because they are not considered newsworthy, or, somehow, terribly, considered not especially controversial. This however wasn’t the case with the abandonment of Luna (a pseudonym), which is a story that Italy has been following closely since a foster family in Italy has now claimed Italian citizenship for the now toddler. Many Italians seen this as the obvious result of selfishness by those who are convinced that it is their right to buy children.
Surrogacy is still considered controversial. Many find it difficult to even pronounce the words “pregnancy for others,” preferring to dismiss it as “uterus for rent.” Of course, there is no “for rent” sign next to pictures of a womb. Nor, for that matter, can we speak of motherhood when a woman is pregnant without the intention of becoming a mother.
However, before addressing this issue from an ethical point of view, I would like to start by telling a counter-story. A story beginning with C., who was the mother of three children, had a good job, a husband, was an active woman with a great desire to earn some money.
C was a strong and determined woman. She was in charge of everything in the household, and at some point decided she would start carrying pregnancies for couples who otherwise would not have the capacity to have children. It is true that C made a lot of money that way, but she was also very proud to do it — proud to help other people. After giving birth to two baby boys for a gay couple, she decided it was time to stop.
The two dads adored C. They even met her husband, her mother, and her children. One day, one of them articulated what it meant: “What C has done for our family is priceless. What price could be placed on the care with which C put into the pregnancy of our two children? I will be forever grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to become a father.”
Considering this version of events, it might seem strange that in Belgium, Canada, Denmark and some U.S. states, surrogacy is only legal when carried out free of charge. Meanwhile, in other parts of the United States, it is legal even when paid.
Nonetheless, these states enforce strict rules to protect women and children: Women must already be mothers, economically independent and must be able to demonstrate that their choices are informed and conscious. Children, once born, must be recognized and must not be abandoned. However, in other parts of the world, particularly in developing countries, the context is quite different: the rules are so easily circumvented that it is not uncommon for women to be exploited, and for a shady trade in children to begin.
“If it is right to be horrified by stories of abandonment like Luna’s, but it is totally unfair to pass judgment on surrogacy as a whole”
Boudewijn Huysmans
As with many other practices, in the case of surrogacy, the ethical evaluation depends on the rules that are established and the methods that are (or are not) respected. Think, for example, of organ transplants. In theory, we all agree that it is good and right to save a person’s life by transplanting a heart or a kidney or a liver. But how do we get these organs? From whom, and under what rules are they explanted? The rule is generally that of gratuitousness and anonymity. Organs are therefore neither sold nor bought, but donated.
Nonetheless, since the organs available for transplant are rare, a parallel market exists. It happens that some people — often alone, sometimes on the margins of society, sometimes prisoners — are kidnapped or killed in order to extract their organs and then sell them to the highest bidder. And some rich people survive because they can afford to pay large sums of money to organ traffickers.
If I dwell on the ethical ambivalence of organ transplant, it’s because I’m a little tired of the abstract piety of those who go into battle to defend the rights of the most fragile, but then are ignorant or remain silent about the problems and abuses associated with a particular practice, railing against surrogacy by condemning it outright.
If it is right to be horrified by stories of abandonment like the one of Luna’s in Ukraine, it is totally unfair to pass judgment on surrogacy as a whole, based on the assumption that no woman can decide for herself what to do with her own body, or that every child born through surrogacy is comparable to a “package purchased on Amazon.”
Fatherhood and motherhood are always complex and, if I may say so, almost never the result of a purely altruistic act. How many people have children because they think that’s the way it is, or because it just happens, or because they want a child as badly as you might want a dog or a cat? How many are aware of the fact that parenthood has very little to do with DNA or blood, but more to do with the bond created with the child when loving them, caring for them, sometimes even scolding them?
The French language, in this regard, is perhaps more subtle than the Italian one, since when referring to parenting it uses two terms: “géniteur,” meaning “biological parent,” and “parent,” meaning “father” or “mother,” even in the absence of biological ties.
It is one thing to give birth to a child; it is quite another to become their mother or father. It is one thing to have genetic ties with the living creature that is born; it is another thing to be present: to always be there, to transmit values, impose rules, build habits, share words; to listen and to love.
The message from state-controlled media in Russia is clear: we are a peace-loving country constantly provoked by the West. The coverage is very different to the war hysteria before the annexation of Crimea and hides how the Kremlin benefits financially from tensions in Ukraine.
Putin holding a press conference in Moscow
-Analysis-
MOSCOW — For days now, Russian state broadcasters have had ample opportunity to convey to domestic audiences the Kremlin’s official line on the Ukraine conflict. The message: the West is talking up the threat of war and endangering Russia.
An example was Saturday night’s evening news on the state broadcaster Pervyi. The program opens with an alleged violation of Russian territorial waters in the Pacific by a U.S. submarine, a story that has long since been dismissed as inaccurate by the U.S. military.
This is followed by a fragment on Putin’s phone conversations with U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, in which they are said to have discussed “provocative speculations” about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the “impasse the intra-Ukrainian conflict has reached.”
The presenter sees the travel warnings issued by more than ten Western countries for Ukraine and the reduction of embassy staff as an attempt to further aggravate the crisis situation. The press spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is quoted as claiming that Western diplomats are aware of “acts in preparation” that would worsen the security situation in Ukraine.

This is not about the danger posed by Russian troops stationed near the border, but about alleged Ukrainian provocations that the West is aware of or has even orchestrated. Later, a regular commentator – who is also press director of the state oil giant Rosneft – speaks about “American scare stories” that even the Ukrainians did not believe.
The situation is similar to the internet offerings of state propagandists. Vladimir Solovyov, who usually presents TV talk shows, mocks Joe Biden in his internet broadcast: the U.S. president always mixes up countries, maybe he doesn’t know what the Ukrainian conflict is about.
It resonates with the audience. The 79-year-old is “senile”. The West is “a madhouse”. Top Ukrainian military officers are “fools” who are looking forward to war. NATO planes and ships are “on our borders”.
This is the Kremlin’s core message to its people. Russia is a peace-loving country that is constantly provoked by the evil West. The message is so omnipresent that even the media that are critical of the Kremlin are reluctant to make the Russian deployment on the Ukrainian border a broad issue.
A newsstand in Moscow, Russia
Alexander Sayganov/SOPA Images/ZUMA
Last Friday, the thrice-weekly Novaya Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, ran the story of a tortured activist on its front page, and on Wednesday, a major interview with a security expert about the “political thriller” between Russia and the United States.
In many cases, the American warning of war is not taken seriously, even among Kremlin critics. Yulia Latyninia, a journalist critical of the Kremlin who left Russia five years ago after threats and attacks, spoke on her program of a “war that will not happen” but from which the Kremlin has already benefited.
Because the ruble’s exchange rate had fallen as a result of the Western panic, the Russian state budget had saved eight billion rubles. This refers to the fact that Russia sells it main exports – oil and gas – for foreign currency. The lower the ruble, the higher the revenue for the state budget.
Overall, the mood of the media in Russia is very different from the Russian war hysteria of 2014 and 2015, which was meant to prepare the domestic population for the annexation of Crimea, for example. But it would be premature to conclude that the Kremlin is not planning an escalation. This time, the Russian state can present its people with a fait accompli and trust that the people believe it — a plausible calculation given the many years of propaganda.

The message from state-controlled media in Russia is clear: we are a peace-loving country constantly provoked by the West. The coverage is very different to the war hysteria before the annexation of Crimea and hides how the Kremlin benefits financially from tensions in Ukraine.
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