Surrogacy is when a baby is carried and born not by the couple’s birth mother, but by another woman who agrees to help. Substitute mothers are used for serious reasons, such as contraindications to pregnancy and childbirth. In Ukraine and several other countries surrogacy is a legal and regulated medical service. Surrogate mothers have been used by Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband, many other stars, and thousands of ordinary couples. But in Ukraine this sphere is still not well enough covered, so people have questions, the answers to which seem obvious if you understand the topic a little.
So, you are shown a surrogacy program. And you’re worried – what will the baby look like? As always, the parents, i.e., you. Let’s investigate it, to finally dispel the myth that babies born by surrogates look like the women who carried them.
Who is genetically related to a child born to a surrogate mother?
The answer to this question determines who the baby will look like. After all, the external resemblance of a child to its parents and other relatives is determined by genes. In our country only gestational surrogacy is permitted. What is this auxiliary reproductive technology? Prospective parents deliver their genetic material: woman – eggs and man – sperm. IVF is performed in a medical institution – the eggs are fertilized with sperm. The best embryos are selected from the obtained embryos and transferred into the body of the woman the couple has chosen as a surrogate mother. The surrogate goes through pregnancy and childbirth, after which she transfers the baby to the biological parents.
Obviously, the surrogate mother has no kinship with the child she is carrying. Pregnancy itself simply does not involve it. The unborn child receives the genes of his or her biological parents. It cannot be like the surrogate.
If donor cells are used
Rarely, donor eggs are used in surrogacy programs. This method is used when there are serious problems with the woman’s ovarian reserve. Then, the baby inherits the genes of the father and the egg donor. But here, too, there can be no resemblance to a surrogate – by law, a woman cannot be a surrogate and a donor at the same time. Besides, if the quality of a man’s sperm is poor or there is no sperm in his ejaculate, donor sperm could be used. In this case the baby will be like the biological mother and sperm donor.
Where does the myth that a baby looks like a surrogate mother come from?
In today’s Ukraine, the surrogacy program, by definition, means that a baby born will look like its parents, but not like a surrogate mother. If only because the procedure of using the genetic biomaterial is strictly regulated by the law. By the way, we did not use the word “modern” for nothing. Besides the gestational surrogacy there is the traditional surrogacy, when a surrogate mother is simultaneously a biological mother. Sometimes it was used in the old days in the case of infertility. One may recall, for example, the story of the Old Testament, when Sarah hired a maid to conceive from Abraham and bear a child for the couple. Of course, there were cases later, but for obvious reasons they were not publicized. Surely it is in the story that we should look for the roots of the misconception about the relationship between a child and a surrogate mother.
