As one European country looks to ban commercial surrogacy, another takes its place

The country of Georgia is continuing to move forward with its plan to put a stop to commercial surrogacy, but putting an end to the exploitative practice is proving to be incredibly difficult, as women have indicated their preference to simply move to Albania.

Last year, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili announced that lawmakers were considering a draft law to only allow altruistic surrogacy — where would-be parents cannot pay a surrogate mother for the use of her body — and restrict it solely to Georgian citizens. According to New Lines Magazine, just 5% of prospective parents are Georgian nationals. The overwhelming majority of people using Georgian women as surrogates are foreigners.

The magazine interviewed one woman at a surrogacy clinic, Mariam, who was looking to be part of her second surrogate pregnancy — and her goal was to better provide for her children. “Surrogacy is hard. It’s a big pressure and responsibility to carry someone else’s child,” she said. “But in Georgia, there aren’t enough jobs to move forward and do all the things I need to do for my son.”

Surrogates are said to be paid between $17,000 to $22,000, a large sum of money in a country where a waiter earns less than $5,000 per year.

Dr. Keti Gotsiridze, who founded Chachava’s Reproductive Health Center, told New Lines that she doesn’t understand the problem people have with surrogacy. “Doctors in many European countries who are so against it, I cannot understand them,” Gotsiridze said. “When they see their patients on the edge of a nervous breakdown doing 15, 20 IVF attempts, why will they not give them this option?” While it’s undoubtedly difficult to see parents struggle with infertility, there is no mention of the children who will be born through the process, and what their rights are.

Ukraine was one of the most popular countries in the world for the surrogacy industry; like Georgia, poverty is a major factor, with surrogacy allowing women to be given large sums of money for the use of their bodies. And also like Georgia, lawmakers are looking to stop commercial surrogacy, all while foreigners continue seeking Ukrainian surrogates despite Russia’s ongoing war. Many, however, moved to seek surrogates from Georgia instead, with the Ministry of Health estimating the number of babies born via surrogacy has doubled in the five years leading up to 2022. Most of the surrogates are single mothers, and come from poor backgrounds. And it’s for this exact reason that many deride surrogacy as exploitative and unethical for women. The would-be parents are typically wealthy, and the women serving as surrogates are typically low-income. The reverse situation is exceedingly rare.

But, as New Lines reported, putting a stop to surrogacy in Georgia will likely have little effect on the surrogacy trade overall; already, Albania is looking to fill the vacuum. Parents are moving their embryos from Georgia to Albania, with clinics also looking to jump in. “Outlaw these arrangements in one country and it just makes for a profitable market elsewhere,” Carolina Marin Pedreno, a U.K.-based family lawyer, said. While this is unfortunately true, all that means is that more world governments need to intervene to put an end to the exploitative practice.

“I only recommend doing surrogacy if a person is mentally strong,” Alessia, a single mother in Georgia who has been a surrogate twice, said. New Lines reported that she needed therapy afterwards to help overcome attachment issues. “But when you need finances there is no other way.”

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