- We constantly get new requests from couples who ask for help.
It's a tough situation - every month, every week more children are born.
That's what Sam Everingham, founder of the non-profit organization Growing Families, which supports involuntarily childless people who want to have children through surrogacy, says.
Now the organization has reorganized its activities and evacuates daily surrogate mothers and children from war-torn Ukraine.
Many surrogate mothers in Ukraine
In total, the organization has contact with the parents of 111 newborn babies.
At the same time, hundreds of pregnant surrogate mothers are stuck in the country, according to calculations from various organizations.
Ukraine is the second largest country in the world for surrogate mediators.
In Ukraine, commercial surrogacy is legal and widespread poverty has made surrogacy a source of livelihood for some women.
Ukraine's largest surrogate intermediary, Biotexcom, currently has 30 babies being cared for in a shelter outside Kyiv.
"That number is constantly rising and soon we can have 100 babies if nothing changes," writes the company's legal adviser Denis Herman in an email to SVT.
Wants to stay - despite the war
Some surrogate mothers have chosen to stay in Ukraine despite the war.
They do not want to leave their families or spouses, who are forbidden to leave the country.
Parents and mediators have in some cases pressured the surrogates to evacuate, according to Everingham.
- It is their choice, we are very clear in the contact with the parents.
It is the surrogate mothers' own choice if they want to leave and they must be treated with respect.