Fruit ban: seaside doctors accused of trafficking babies
In Primorye, eight doctors were charged with child trafficking: they sent 13 children abroad who were born to surrogate mothers in Russia. Now the children are about six years old, they all live abroad. However, according to the investigation, foreign citizens obtained the right to surrogate motherhood illegally. The case concerns the period from 2018 to 2020, during which time doctors managed to earn more than 53 million rubles. Izvestia dealt with the twists and turns of the case and how Russian children are protected from being sold abroad now.
What is the essence of the seaside doctors' case?
The Primorsky Krai Prosecutor's Office has approved an indictment against eight medical workers at a private clinic who are charged under paragraph "b" of Part 3 of Article 127.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Trafficking in minors with their illegal export abroad").
The investigation believes that from 2018 to 2020, doctors illegally issued medical documentation, deliberately providing false information about the infertility of buyers and genetic parents. After that, assisted reproductive technologies were used under the guise of infertility treatment "to cultivate embryos and then give birth to children." The investigation recognizes the purpose of these actions as "the sale and subsequent transfer of children abroad."
Surrogacy for foreign citizens was illegally organized by the Agency for Reproductive Technologies clinic, which operated through branches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. She also collaborated with other medical institutions.
Most of the children were transported to China. Moreover, this did not happen immediately: not all the children born were able to quickly get to their "customers" due to the pandemic and were in Russia for some time. A total of 13 children went abroad. The total amount involved in the case is more than 53 million rubles. It includes payment for procedures at the clinic and the money that the surrogate mothers received as a reward.
The defense lawyers insist that the children have Chinese citizenship, and they were "legally taken abroad." Now they live with their families, they are about six years old.
According to Alexandra Klenina, Senior Assistant Prosecutor of Primorsky Krai for media Relations, the defendants in the case face a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The case will be considered by the Frunzensky District Court of Vladivostok.
Elena Pomerantseva, a member of the council of the Russian Association of Human Reproduction, vice-president of the Association of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Clinics, doubts the guilt of Primorsky doctors in an interview with Izvestia.
— I do not think that the doctor and the embryologist independently decided on this option of fertilization, especially since at that time there was no ban on the use of donor material and its transfer into the uterine cavity of the surrogate mother, — she said.
Why surrogacy turned out to be a crime
Surrogacy is allowed in Russia. Moreover, during the period of the criminal case, surrogacy services for foreign citizens were also allowed. Only in December 2022, a law was passed that explicitly prohibits foreigners from using this service in Russia: now it is available only to married Russians and single citizens of the Russian Federation. Now all attempts to send a child from a surrogate mother abroad will be considered a crime.
"Until 2020, the legislation on surrogacy in Russia did have gaps, which allowed unscrupulous individuals to execute transactions that were actually equivalent to human trafficking," Alexey Gavrishev, managing partner of AVG Legal, told Izvestia. — The amendments adopted at the end of 2022 were aimed at eliminating these gaps.
However, before that, commercial surrogacy for foreigners in Russia had been in demand for a long time. The fact is that in many countries this method of giving birth to a child is generally prohibited: in most European countries, in China, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and many others. Many states allow only gratuitous surrogacy. In Italy, last year, it was forbidden to seek such help even abroad.
But in China, on the contrary, children who were born to surrogate mothers in other countries are registered. Citizens of this country often sought help from Russian clinics.
However, according to media reports with reference to the case materials, Chinese citizens in some cases did not come to Russia at all and were not examined, and this service in Russia is possible only if there are medical indications, that is, infertility of parents.
Perhaps such a forgery was carried out in order to choose the sex of the unborn child: in China, as you know, it is much more honorable to give birth to a boy than a girl, even after the repeal of the law on one child per family (this happened in 2015). According to the case file, the Chinese men donated their biomaterial and chose the sex of the children. But this choice is also prohibited in surrogacy in Russia.
Thus, the surrogacy service for foreign citizens turned into a case of child trafficking for Russian doctors.
Note that there are still children in Russia who were born "for foreigners." In 2023, a court in Krasnoyarsk banned two Chinese citizens from taking children born to surrogates. They ordered this service from a Russian clinic, but were unable to transport the children to China due to the pandemic. Then the surrogate mothers, so that the babies would not be sent to an orphanage, wrote them down on their birth certificate and wrote a power of attorney to the clinic staff, after which they handed over the babies to them for money. This was also recognized as the sale of children. Three mothers then received criminal penalties, and the Chinese fathers tried to get the children through the courts, but could not.
In this case, the motivation voiced by a Chinese citizen who used the surrogacy service in Russia is also interesting.: his girlfriend is "healthy, but does not want to give birth, as they have no vacations, difficulties with work, she has chosen a career, works on television." Thus, there were no medical indications in the case, which does not concern the seaside doctors, either, and the service was obtained illegally. However, the Chinese citizen insists that he was not the one who tricked him into buying a child in Russia, and the clinic did not give him full information.
The children who were not received by foreigners are now mostly in specialized institutions — orphanages or foster homes.
Similar cases involving the sale of children to foreigners, when surrogacy was used without real grounds, have been in Russia before. In 2023, the Nikulin Court in Moscow found guilty the director of the European Surrogacy Center, an embryologist, a reproductologist and an obstetrician-gynecologist, assigning them real prison terms. The essence is the same: the investigation found that foreigners had obtained surrogacy services illegally, so the actions were classified as child trafficking.
Can there be any new cases
Maxim Petrov, Director General of the Center for Social Initiatives for Family Protection, Fatherhood, Motherhood, Childhood and the Development of Social Programs, notes that although the law banning surrogacy for foreigners was adopted only in 2022, any actions that go beyond medical indications show signs of document forgery, substitution of the purposes of the medical procedure. and the transfer of the child to third parties, bypassing legal procedures, and then qualified as criminally punishable.
"Until 2022, Russia remained one of the few countries where surrogacy was legal, relatively inexpensive and with minimal legal control," he told Izvestia. — The law of 2022 sharply reduced demand, but did not reduce it to zero. Loopholes remained, including fictitious marriages with Russian citizens. And they are still being used.
Denis Vurdov, a member of the National Association of Healthcare Managers and CEO of the United Healthcare Group of Companies, notes that surrogacy does not have a statute of limitations in the usual sense of the term.
"That is why cases arise before 2022, and the regulatory authorities have the opportunity, due to the lack of a statute of limitations, to assess the legality of the actions of reproductive specialists in private clinics," he told Izvestia.
How has the law affected Russian families
Elena Pomerantseva believes that everything that is happening now around surrogacy has "negative consequences for ART clinics." She believes that because of "unscrupulous businessmen," it was the tough version of the law banning surrogacy for foreigners that was adopted in 2022, which also hit Russian families.
The fact is that the law on the prohibition of surrogacy for foreigners also prohibits the use of partial donation, which is why only women with their own eggs can use the program. With partial donation, an embryo may appear when using donated eggs or sperm cells in combination with biomaterial from one of the parent pairs.
"As a result, our citizens suffer, who, for medical reasons, cannot give birth to a child without surrogacy and leave for countries where there is no such restriction," Elena Pomerantseva said. — In fact, we have restricted some families from having a child in their country. You can't blame all reproductologists for what is happening and pass laws against your population.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
