What’s Current: Babies born to surrogate mothers left stranded in Ukraine amid coronavirus travel restrictions

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  • Over 100 surrogate babies have been stranded in various medical centers across the Ukraine due to coronavirus travel restrictions. As a result, surrogate mothers are not being compensated and left to raise unplanned children. 4W reports:

“The children are born stateless, stored in hotels and private homes with no official legal guardian.

BioTexCom, which charges about $50,000 per baby, has previously been implicated in a series of scandals including human trafficking. The surrogacy industry in Ukraine has so little oversight that experts have claimed, ‘it’s as if there were no regulations at all.'”

  • Global News reports Canada’s government has offered no specific relief package for women whose ex-partners can’t pay child or spousal support due to lost income during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Over 500 girls were rescued from child marriage in Ethiopia since COVID-19 regulations shut down schools, leaving girls vulnerable to forced marriage.
  • A California church is suing video chat platform Zoom after a hacker “bombed” a virtual Bible study with pornography and child abuse.
Meghan McCarty

Meghan McCarty is an undergraduate student and aspiring journalist living in the United States.