"I carry babies on demand": Kharkiv woman says surrogacy pays €15,000 and bought house and cars
A Ukrainian woman from Kharkiv says each surrogacy pregnancy brings about €15,000; she has carried three babies for foreign couples and used the earnings to secure housing.
A 32-year-old woman from Kharkiv says she charges about 15,000 euros for each surrogacy pregnancy and has used the earnings to change her family’s life — buying an apartment, then a house, and two cars.
Alina Stakhorska told a magazine that she delivered her third child as a surrogate last year and is one of about 1,500 Ukrainian women who helped foreign couples become parents during that period. She has carried babies for couples from Ireland, Germany and India, and first accepted the arrangement when she was 21.
Why she chose surrogacy and how she used the money
Stakhorska said her first decision to become a surrogate came while she was still married and without her own home. After a divorce, she and her eldest child, then three-and-a-half years old, had nowhere to live and stayed with her grandmother for six months. An advertisement introduced her to the option; she underwent the medical screening process together with her son and agreed, driven by clear financial motives.
"I had not the slightest doubt, because I knew why I was doing it," she said. She admitted the pregnancies were physically and emotionally demanding, but that the money made a radical difference in her circumstances.
Stakhorska says proceeds from her surrogate work paid first for an apartment and later for a house in Kharkiv. From the money earned for the third pregnancy she says they bought a house in Kharkiv and two cars. Her husband initially objected but later accepted her choice; the couple were married for four years.
She also spoke about the emotional side: "I felt they were not my children, but I was caring, as I should be," she said. She has kept in touch with some commissioning parents — in particular one German couple, who, she says, visited Kharkiv last October after seven years to show their son where he had been born. Asked whether she would do it again, she did not rule it out: "Yes, I would. If, despite my years and numerous births, they accept me, I am ready. Just this one more time."
Photo: peksels
