To review this article, My Account, then View Stored Stories.
To review this article, My Profile, then view the recorded stories.
The daughter of a Brooklyn couple who will be born in April to a surrogate mother in Ukraine. Then the virus hit.
By Lizzie Widdicombe
The dating between Ben and Abbie Rosenberg began in an old-fashioned way. Not his initial assembly, which took up Jdate, a Jewish dating site, but his attendance, which took position basically in writing. At the time they lived in New York, but Abbie, a time organizer, on a business trip, opening a food stand in Miami, when Ben sent her a first message. Then Ben went to make a stop at his circle of relatives in Israel. They exchanged messages from Jdate, which became emails, text messages, Skype sessions and eventually synchronized views of “The Colbert Report” while talking on the phone. By the time they met in person, a month later, “we were already friends and we were about to fall in love,” Abbie recalls. Ben parked his car along Fort Greene Park and Abbie took the passenger seat. They held hands and talked for so long that the engine shut down.
Three years later, they married and sought to have children. They were thirty-eight years old. The preference to procreate had been hinted at in them. Abbie, a dark-haired little girl, who organizes occasions at the Chelsea Market, an elegant shopping mall in Manhattan. Ben, who has a tight beard, ran a small home organization in Queens. His friends had babies; Abbie said, “Suddenly we knew that this would be the next step for us: proper parents.” But Abbie has a hard time getting pregnant. There were medical disorders (a uterine fibroid was eliminated) and she underwent a number of fertility treatments, all of which failed. After years on the roller coaster of in vitro fertilization (endless visits to doctors, ovulation tracking apps, disappointing phone calls) threw in the towel. “I like it, ” forget it. I just need to be a mother. Adopted, ” said Abbie.
A friend put them in touch with an adoption company in Texas and they flew for an orientation consultation over the weekend. There, they learned the complexities of the business, adding the fact that, in some open adoptions, the birth mother chooses adoptive parents. In some agencies, the total procedure is also involved in pro-life Christian beliefs. They saw a video of a crying teenage girl handing her baby over to a foster parent organization. On the way back to New York, Ben said, “It’s not good for us. Let’s not do that. They looked for a baby, but their next step was unclear. His doctor had advised in the past to review the surrogacy: the rent another woman to bring her biological child; however, the procedure would charge more than a hundred thousand dollars, which is more than they can afford. At one point, a friend’s sister had agreed to bring the baby in for a small sum of twenty thousand dollars. They had traveled to New Mexico, where she lives, for medical procedures, but two embryos could not be identified.
One night after her vacation in Texas, Abbie was organizing a time at the Chelsea Market when one of the guests, a Latthrun talker, told her about a friend that she was going to have a baby through a surrogate mother in Ukraine, where the procedure costs a fraction of what she does in the United States. Abbie’s ears straightened out. She grew up in Massachusetts, but her circle of relatives has Ukrainian roots; “My mother made chicken in Kiev,” she says. He joined a Facebook organization called Intended Parents Surrogacy Support Ukraine, where he discovered couples from all over the world – India, Australia, UK – banknotes. A few weeks later, the Rosenbergs checked into a small breeding company in Ukraine called New Hope, which paired them with a surrogate mother, a 30-year-old woman living outdoors in Kiev. It was the task of the moment of the woman in the company; Abbie said: “I found out it was encouraging for me to come back for more, so to speak. In August 2019, the surrogate mother was pregnant with the Rosenbergs’ baby, a woman they had decided to call Odessa, either in Ukraine. The city and the hero of Homer’s “The Odyssey.” Although they never met in person, the two women developed a friendship through Facebook posts. They shared photos of their cats and mothers, who had lost that year. Abbie said, “We’d cry in combination talking.”
Odessa was to be born through a C-section on April 24, and the Rosenbergs planned to arrive a month earlier to prepare. In March, COVID-1nine made headlines. Abbie and the surrogate exchanged concerned messages. “I’m very worried about you,” the Ukrainian woman wrote after seeing a report on the virus in New York. But there were still robberies between J.F.K. Kiev, and no one was sure of the gravity of the situation. Abbie said, “We were, like, “it’s going to work.” Instead, the opposite happened. Public demonstrations were cancelled. On March 9, Abbie was fired, along with the rest of her team, some time before the city’s shelter order took effect. Countries around the world have begun to impose restrictions. “We looked at it with admiration, ” said Abbie. On 15 March, Ukraine closed its borders. Flights to Kiev were cancelled.
The Rosenbergs frantically emailed Julia Osiyevska, who runs New Hope, but, like everyone else, was lost. When he contacted the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on behalf of the Rosenbergs, he told me: “The first word from the officials was: ‘Maybe they will open the border in September.'” What had begun as a little tragedy, the Rosenbergs possibly not having been there for the birth of their daughter, began to look like an emergency. Under Ukrainian law, healthy newborns are only allowed to stay in the hospital for 28 days. Osiyevska was willing to take Odessa’s house after that, however, the maternity ward said she can also only be sent back to her legal homes. The director of the hospital advised some other plan: at the end of his prayer, Odessa would be transferred to a nearby orphanage. The hospital would hire a wing where nurses would care for young children born to replace mothers, and no visits would be allowed, due to COVID-19. “That’s when, despite everything, I started crying,” Abbie told me. “We were, like, what do you mean” an orphanage? “”
The Rosenbergs weren’t alone. As the virus spread and froze, parents around the world suddenly discovered the apart, thousands of miles away, from newborns who were in fact their biological children. Commercial surrogacy is becoming increasingly popular, thanks to a number of convergent factors: advances in reproductive technology, a wave of restrictive adoption laws, emerging homosexual rights, and the fact that women in evolving countries wait longer to have children, leading to more fertility problems. . But it is also illegal in the world’s top countries, adding throughout continental Europe. Opponents of the practice argue that it makes surrogate mothers vulnerable to exploitation, especially if they are poor, and creates dangers for children. (Some countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, allow surrogacy if not for payment).
As a result, both one and both years, thousands of future parents travel abroad, to a handful of countries where surrogacy is legal. One of the most important destinations is the United States, which has a cutting-edge reproductive generation and the maximum permissive laws: same-sex couples and other single people can have children through a surrogate mother. But value is out of success for many others and, over the decade since, Ukraine has become a less expensive alternative. Ukrainian surrogate mothers give birth to several thousand young children, both one year, most of whom have foreign parents. The country has about 50 clinics and breeding agencies that act as intermediaries, connecting couples with egg donors and surrogate mothers.
COVID-19 has thrown this formula into chaos. There are no official figures on the number of young children stranded in the world. Robin Pope, an Oregon-based attorney representing prospective parents, estimates that at least 200 young children were stranded in the United States, cared for through an impromptu network of surrogate mothers, parents, nurses, and intelligent Samaritans. She told me that the son of one of her Chinese clients is still under the care of his surrogate mother. “The father flies and his bath is almost five months old,” he said. According to ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman, at least one hundred and twenty-five young children have been stranded in the country since the start of the pandemic.
The problem there made headlines when the country’s largest reproductive agency, BioTexCom, released a video showing forty-five screaming newborns lined up in trolleys under the chandeliers of a hotel ballroom. The company had transformed the hotel, which it owns, into a giant nursery for babies who were awaiting their parents. A handful of nurses circulated among the children, feeding and cuddling them. “We show babies to their parents online and our managers arrange video calls,” one of the nurses said, in a voice-over. “It’s heartbreaking to see how the parents miss their little ones.” The video set off a fierce debate in Ukraine about the country’s surrogacy industry. Several politicians called for a ban on the service for foreigners. Mykola Kuleba, the country’s commissioner for children’s rights, lamented that Ukraine had become “an international online store for babies.” The video also revived criticism of BioTexCom: the company was involved in one notorious case where a set of parents abandoned their baby in Ukraine after she was born with health problems. In 2019, the company’s director, Albert Tochilovsky, was briefly placed under house arrest, following allegations of child trafficking, document forgery, and tax avoidance. (A spokesperson for the company noted that the director was not convicted, saying, “He was charged, but the investigation didn’t find any evidence.”)
Osiyevska, rosenbergs agency director New Hope, was horrified through the Video of The BioTexCom. “The picture” — of the industry — “was bad, ” he told me. Osiyevska runs a much smaller operation than BioTexCom, but his agency’s scenario was still overwhelming: in addition to Odessa, he was guilty of 4 young children whose due dates were April and May. It can take months for your parents to get them back. “It was a nightmare,” he said. “I sought to die.” She didn’t feel comfortable entrusting them to hired nannies, as some agencies did. “What if there is a medical challenge and, God forbid, the bavia dies?” She. “Who’s guilty?” She proposed a rescue plan: if the Rosenbergs did not reach Ukraine within twenty-eight days, she would move Odessa from the maternity ward to a public hospital in Kiev. It was just a little bigger than the orphanage. Marjorie Rosenthal, a pediatrician at Yale School of Medicine, told me that young children who stay for weeks or months in a hospital or day care “will probably be pretty good, especially if they pass from home with loving parents.” But the newborn’s brain develops through interaction with a caregiver. “Everyone is involved in the fact that if the childcare ratio becomes too high and their wishes are not fulfilled, or if they don’t interact, the threat of developmental challenges increases,” Rosenthal said.
On Facebook, prospective parents exchanged panic messages. The first impediment they faced was bureaucratic: obtaining a visa to enter Ukraine while the country’s borders were closed. This became more complicated due to the fact that some countries, such as Australia, had closed their visa workplaces amid the pandemic. Parents of intent in countries where governments oppose publicity surrogacy also had difficult journeys. The Rosenbergs did not have this problem, but it was difficult to overturn the travel ban. In April, they began to look, to stay up all night so they could call the U.S. Embassy in Kiev as soon as it opened. The officials were friendly, but not particularly helpful. “They didn’t really know what to tell us,” Abbie said. They diversified and contacted “anyone who knew someone” in the government: a friend who had worked in the past for Chuck Schumer, a colleague with a lot of knowledge about Chelsea Clinton, relatives of Ben who claimed to be going through Jared Kushner. Finally, Ryan Lehman, a staff member at the workplace of Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York State congressman, took pity on them and began calling government agencies on his behalf.
The next challenge was logistical. Even if the Rosenbergs received the documents, they didn’t know how to get into Ukraine. There were no advertising flights in or out of the country. A Facebook pahires organization, a Swedish couple named Anneli and Navid Diehl, had circulated nationally about their inability to succeed in their children. A rich Swede saw the story and hired them with a personal jet. At one point, Abbie recalled, the Rosenbergs contacted Ben’s wealthy Israeli relatives, who were very enthusiastic about the pandemic. “They say, “Do it! That’s twenty thousand dollars. We just went to a wedding in Kiev, ” said Abbie. Unfortunately, relatives didn’t offer to hire them a jet plane.
Finally, the Rosenbergs heard from someone who could help: an Australian named Sam Everingham, head of a Sydney-based nonprofit called Growing Families. Everingham usually organizes meetings for others interested in foreign surrogacy. He was now running as an unofficial agent for some 90 desperate parents seeking to have young children in Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia, Canada, Mexico, Colombia and the United States. An Australian parent organisation took Tbilisi in February with their 13-month-old son to attend the birth of his triplets at the home of a Georgian surrogate mother. When the pandemic arrived, the couple discovered herself trapped in an Airbnb apartment with all 4 young men for 3 months, seeking to download the birth certificate of newborns at closed government offices. The regulations also required that there be an adult ling for each baby, however, their circle of relatives simply cannot fly from Australia to help. They discovered another Australian couple flying from Tbilisi to Melbourne and who agreed with their children. “They spent two days in the air with the little children on their lap,” the mother told me.
By comparison, Ukraine was easier. Everingham told the Rosenbergs that although there were no flights to the country, there was a way to enter: the country stores a border with Belarus, which had become something like the Lake Ozarks pandemic in Europe. The president, the country’s strongman, Alexander Lukashenko, refused to take precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. He played in a public hockey game, where he told a reporter, “There’s no virus here. Do you see them fly? I don’t see them either,” and he begged the citizens to stay healthy by going to the banya and drinking forty to fifty millimeters of vodka a day. (CoVID-19 cases in the country subsequently increased).
For the parents, it was a smart thing to do. Ukraine has left open some checkpoints on its land border. Everingham asked its visitors to fly to Minsk, spend a night in a Belarusian hotel and take a car to the border, where, with the appropriate permits, they can enter Ukraine. There was only one problem: taxi drivers simply couldn’t cross the border. Everingham consumers had to cross a one-kilometre stretch of highway, a no-man’s land between the two countries. It was a complicated matrix, but Everingham said several of its consumers had come to the country in this way. The Rosenbergs paid him two thousand dollars to establish his parent company. Another American from the Facebook organization was dealing with them: Joel Leinecke of Loomis, California, whose third child was to be born to a Ukrainian surrogate mother last April. . On April 15, Leinecke sent an email to the Rosenbergs he had controlled to enter Ukraine. He was wearing baby clothes and a huge amount of cash, paying the surrogate, filled a secret wallet in his socks and underwear, with, he noted in the email, “a big ass knife, just to make me feel better.” She had arrived at the hospital by the birth of her daughter. His wife, Michelle, told me, “We’re adventurous, yet man, it’s the ultimate adventure we’ve ever had.”
Early in the morning of April 25, the Rosenbergs left their apartment in Fort Greene in a quiet city. The pandemic near its peak. Like the top of New Yorkers, they had come out of the house a little last month. “I’m afraid to pass and get a position to stay on the hinge device in my building,” Abbie said. But they had to get on a plane. Odessa was born a few days earlier, on April 21. Every few hours, they took out their phones to look at a photo Osiyevska had sent, taken through maternity nurses. “They had tied a little handkerchief to his head, ” said Abbie. She looked like a little babushka.
Just twenty-four hours before their departure, they had won an email containing a coveted document: a letter from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, giving them permission to enter the country through Belarus. Few Americans obtained such authorizations, and when they arrived at an abandoned J.F.K., an Air France staff member made some calls before recording them. His first flight, bound for Paris, almost empty. At Charles de Gaulle Airport, other people walked in Tyvek suits. But the plane to Minsk completed by Belarusians Jothrul, who, like its president, seemed detached from the virus, screaming in the hallways. “It’s like being in a circle of relatives we weren’t invited to,” Abbie said.
One of Everingham’s drivers met them in Minsk, and drove them to Novaya Guta, a military checkpoint on the border with Ukraine, surrounded by lush forests. The border gates were closed. Soldiers with bomb-sniffing dogs stood watch. The driver deposited the Rosenbergs a few feet from the gates, where they joined a small mass of travellers hoping to cross into Ukraine on foot. A group of Eastern Europeans just ahead of them were turned away. The border agents examined the Rosenbergs’ paperwork—entry letter, passports, copy of their marriage certificate—and waved them through. They headed down the empty highway that led to Ukraine on foot, pulling their suitcases behind them. They looked like tourists who had been beamed into a post-apocalyptic future. Birdsong rang out from the surrounding trees. Gravel crunched beneath their feet. They were both wearing surgical masks, and Ben had seventy-five hundred dollars, in cash—payment for the surrogate—crammed into the cargo pocket of his pants.
The Rosenbergs crossed into Ukraine at Novaya Guta, a military checkpoint on the border in Belarus.
Ukraine was implementing its mandatory quarantine, requiring others to download a tracking app that would allow the state to monitor its movements. The Rosenbergs waited two weeks on an Airbnb in Kiev. On Sunday, May 10, Mother’s Day, they took a taxi to the maternity ward. Two Ukrainian nurses pulled out a pink wheelbarrow with Odessa. She was 3 weeks old, wrapped in a white sheet and dressed in a pink hat. He looked round the room enthusiastically. “This is our baby,” Ben says. Abbie told me that because of her ordeal, she had not become too attached to her daughter’s thinking. “I had to stay away from her, otherwise I would have gone crazy,” he said. “When I met her, it was like a piece of the puzzle. They gave it to us. We can exhale. The Rosenbergs returned home with their baby Odessa ten days later on one of the first advertising flights from Kiev. On the plane, they saw Joel Leinecke, who was on his way home with his baby, EmberRaine.
“When I met her, it was like a piece of the puzzle. They gave it to us,” Abbie said of his meeting with Odessa.
In recent weeks, the crisis has begun to subside. Ukraine reopened its borders to foreigners and, on 10 June, BioTexCom, the Ukrainian agency, held a press conference, inviting the cameras to see 11 couples, from Spain and Argentina, meet their young children for the first time, at the Hotel Venecia. Pope, the U.S. attorney, said many of her clients who travel to the U.S. have picked up their young children but can no longer return home because they get a newborn passport. The State Department handles a massive accrual of requests. “I tell other people they might have to wait six months,” Pope said.
So far, Everingham has helped reunite fifty newborns with their families. It still responds to calls from frantic parents, especially Americans, who are the subject of travel bans due to the highest rate of infection in the United States. “Cross-border surrogacy has been fragile, logistical and legal,” he said. “COVID-19 just made the stage worse.” He hoped the crisis would lead governments to reconsider their surrogacy legislation. “We would love for them to implement legislation so that you can do a surrogacy in this country and not have to travel abroad to have a child,” he said. But if not, he predicted that parents of intent would continue to travel, regardless of the risk. I had already introduced some other secondary activity that managed embryo delivery logistics, for couples hoping to begin the procedure this summer. He said, “What has surprised me is the incredible effort other people will make to create a family.”
The Rosenbergs spend the summer in Great Neck with Ben’s parents. Odessa recently began to smile. “She has longer hands and feet, ” said Abbie. “It’s very vocal, it makes noise. And it’s a ferocious eater.” They didn’t know what the next bankruptcy of their lives would be like, whether they would continue to live in New York and if Abbie got his homework back. But they hope one day to take a vacation in Ukraine, with their daughter. They need to make a stop in the city of Odessa and meet the surrogate mother of their son, with whom they are in contact. “We’ll be back, ” said Abbie. “We have to see other people. We have paintings to do.”
It will be used in accordance with our policy.
In March, the city’s emergency rooms were filled with other “well-worried” people with mild or moderate COVID-19 symptoms, but in April they began to fill with much sicker patients.
With the closure, many academics are making the transition to distance learning, with parents posing as technical assistants and home instructors.
Work and life have never been closer for the Italian photographer Elisabetta Zavoli, as the coronavirus pandemic has turned her young people into subjects and collaborators in her art.
Sections
More
© 2020 Condé Nast. All rights are reserved. Your use of this site implies acceptance of our user agreement (updated 1/1/20) and our privacy policy and cookie (updated 1/1/20) and your privacy rights in California. Do not sell my personal information The New Yorker may earn a portion of the sales of products purchased on our site as a component of our associations associated with retailers. The content on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, unless you have the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad selection