Yet there are those who argue that commercial surrogacy can benefit all sides.<\/p>\n
For five years Himatraj and Rajvir Bajwa from London tried unsuccessfully to start a family, including with two rounds of IVF, before they decided to pursue surrogacy.<\/p>\n
Rajvir, 38, has severe endometriosis, making it much harder to conceive. She also has multiple sclerosis.<\/p>\n
The couple decided against the UK, where only altruistic surrogacy is allowed, meaning the mother is not given a financial reward but can be provided expenses. In the UK, surrogacy arrangements are more informal and often arranged either through friends, family, or non-profit organisations which match intended parents with surrogates.<\/p>\n
Under UK law, the surrogate is legally responsible for the child until a parental order is made, which transfers legal responsibility from them to the intended parents.<\/p>\n
Himatraj and Rajvir were concerned about the prospect of having no immediate legal rights over the baby. There have been cases of altruistic surrogates changing their mind about giving up babies, though these cases are exceptionally rare.<\/p>\n
The couple were impressed at how surrogacy is organised in Ukraine, and the cost of surrogacy in the country was another factor.<\/p>\n
They used BioTexCom last year and paid around \u00a365,000 ($87,770) – far less than in the United States, where surrogacy can exceed \u00a3110,000 $150,000. The couple had a good experience with BioTexCom.<\/p>\n
Using IVF, they created an embryo in London, which was shipped to Kyiv and stored in the clinic’s cryogenic storage tanks.<\/p>\n
In June last year, they arrived in Kyiv for the birth of their baby.<\/p>\n
But because of the time it took for UK authorities to complete the paperwork needed and issue their son a passport, they spent his first three months in Kyiv, in and out of a bomb shelter, as Russia bombed the city.<\/p>\n
“It was scary and surreal,” says Rajvir.<\/p>\n
They returned to England with their son in late August.<\/p>\n
In June, they’ll celebrate his first birthday.<\/p>\n
The couple oppose the Ukrainian bill, arguing the surrogacy agency they went through had brought them “joy and happiness”.<\/p>\n
“They gave us something we never thought possible – they’ve made us a family,” says Himatraj, 37.<\/p>\n
Himatraj and his wife wanted to meet their surrogate, and when they did they brought her chocolates and flowers.<\/p>\n
They said they did not believe she had been exploited.<\/p>\n
“It was obviously always their choice and it’s a means for them. And if it’s something that will help them, then, at the end of the day, I’m sure everybody’s happy with the end result.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yet there are those who argue that commercial surrogacy can benefit all sides. For five years Himatraj and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-570678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}