“I Just Want To Live”: A Pregnant Surrogate In Ukraine Speaks Out
By Lizzie Cernik and Anastasiia Levchenko,
Refinery29
| 03. 16. 2022
Kharkiv, Ukraine: 13 March, 2022
Photo by Fotoreserg
The day before war broke out in Ukraine, 33-year-old Tanya [name changed to protect identity] was visiting a hospital in Cherkasy, a city in the center of the country, to check on the health of her unborn twins. She was unable to return to her hometown near Kirovograd due to the ongoing violence and quickly moved to an apartment in the city with her husband and two children.
"I started getting severe pregnancy sickness (hyperemesis) just as the war started," Tanya says over the phone from Ukraine. "I’m now almost 10 weeks pregnant and I’ve struggled to eat anything or cook and care for my children properly because it’s so bad, which has made things even more difficult. I just hope I can stay where I am until I have the babies."
Being pregnant in a war zone is a terrifying prospect for anyone but Tanya’s situation is more complicated than most. She is one of approximately 1,000 surrogates in Ukraine who are currently pregnant with the...
Related Articles
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Zoeann Murphy, The Washington Post | 10.01.2025
MEXICO CITY — When she walked into an IVF clinic in June, Alin Quintana knew it would be the last time she would try to conceive a child. She had prepared herself spiritually and mentally for the visit: She had traveled to a nearby...
By Rob Stein, NPR | 09.30.2025
Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...
By Jessica Mouzo, El País | 10.03.2025
DNA is the molecule of life: this double-helix structure, present in every cell in the body and organized into fragments called genes, stores the instructions for making organisms function. It is a highly precise biological machine, but sometimes it breaks...
GeneWatch UK has prepared a briefing on the genetic modification of nature for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress in October 2025
The upcoming Congress claims to be “where the world comes together to set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.” A major concern for those on the outside is that the Congress may advance plans to develop and encourage the use of synthetic biology in nature conservation. This could at first glance sound like...