The case of the Ukrainian clinic Feskov Human Reproduction Group, operating with links to the Czech Republic, is not just a scandal that should keep the police and courts busy. It is a chilling testimony to the lengths to which a civilisation that has abandoned concepts such as dignity, motherhood and responsibility is prepared to go.
An online catalogue of donors, pricing according to skin colour, extra 'Afro-babies', babies ordered from abroad as parcels from an e-shop, and fathers who have no idea what to do with their newborn after birth. This is not a failure of individuals. This is the system.
The Ukrainian clinic exploited legal loopholes in two countries where this type of surrogacy is officially impermissible but de facto tolerated. The result was a years-long international child trafficking business involving wealthy clients from China, the US and Western Europe.
When the pandemic disrupted logistics, some 'fathers' had no idea where their child was. The parent-child relationship here was reduced to a dispute over costs. This is exactly how a customer behaves, not a father.
The child as an order
When criminologists stumbled upon the case of a man who referred to the entire birth of a child with the word "business" and then disappeared without it, the last illusion that the motivation was the desire for a family fell away. It is a mentality of ownership.
While the clinic defends itself with DNA tests and legal constructs, the point remains the same: the child was created not because it was wanted as a person, but because it was ordered as a product. The facility boasts on its website statistics that say that since its inception, they have distributed up to 18 thousand children in this way to 52 countries.
Customers can choose a "darker shade" of child and the clinic will gladly offer them a solution for an additional fee. It is no longer about medicine, nor is it about helping the infertile. It is eugenics wrapped in the language of service.
A society that tolerates this cannot pretend to be on the side of the weak.
Broken responsibility and abandoned children
Particularly frightening are the cases where a child is 'adopted' by older single men who then go abroad to work and leave the care of the child to strangers. The clinic has fulfilled the contract, the money has arrived, the child has been 'handed over'. No one cares what happens next.
This is precisely where the fallacy of the claim that surrogacy is about love becomes apparent. Love cannot be delegated and cannot be contractually enforced.
The Ukrainian clinic is trying to relativise the case with political attacks and conspiracies, but the facts are clear: investigations in several countries, trials, recurring patterns of behaviour. If this were an isolated failure, the system would grind to a halt.
It did not. Business continues.
The Standard has previously highlighted the personal experience of Olivia Maurel, who was born of surrogacy in the US and has borne the consequences of separation from her biological mother all her life. Her testimony shows that even in cases where there is no lack of money or comfort, a deep wound of identity is created.
However, the Ukrainian clinic and its clients do not foresee such consequences at all. In their logic, a child is a "finished product", not a being with a right to origin, truth and relationship.
Women as consumables
Practices that involve surrogate mothers themselves likewise trample human dignity underfoot.
Contracts with abortion clauses, pressure from lawyers, loss of parental rights before conception. In the Ukrainian context, marked by poverty and war, to speak of free choice is cynicism. It is about exploiting the desperation of women who are cheap and expendable for the global market.
The clinic bears no responsibility for the psychological or physical consequences once the contract is over. The woman has performed the service, collected the agreed sum and the system moves on. This is how the industry works, not care.
The case of the Ukrainian clinic is exemplary proof of why surrogacy cannot be 'just regulated'. It breaks down the natural order of the family, turning motherhood into a service and the child into an object of contract. There is no right to a child. There is only the right of the child not to be bought, manufactured and handed over as a package.
Money and money again
The turnover of this "market" may grow to astronomical heights in the coming years. Where there are billions, there comes aggressive marketing, pressure on politicians and the relativisation of morality.
The clinics resist attacks on value-based activists, but it is clear that this is an organized business that capitalizes on women's poverty and the desires of the rich.
Even Pope Francis has spoken out clearly against surrogacy as a form of exploitation. Not because the Church does not understand the pain of infertile couples, but because it refuses to heal one pain by creating another.
They also targeted Slovakia
What until recently took place in the grey zone of foreign websites and legal wrangling between Ukraine and the Czech Republic has entered directly into Slovak public space. During the summer, an advertising campaign appeared on Slovak Facebook openly offering the possibility to "procure" a child through surrogacy.
The clinic in Slovakia launched a linguistic mutation, admittedly skeletal and at times almost grotesque, but all the more eloquent. The child is offered not as a gift, but as a solution. As a service. As a product that you just have to order.
The clinic's defence is symptomatic. Its legal representative has rejected the criticism, saying that it is only "conjecture", and assures that everything is done in accordance with the laws in force. However, we hear exactly the same phrase with any system that teeters on the edge of morality and takes advantage of a legislative vacuum.
Prohibition as the only moral response
The argument that prohibition will create a black market is the same as was used, for example, with slavery. No one in their right mind today would argue that we should 'better regulate' slavery in the developed world.
If something is unethical at the core, it cannot be ethical in a regulated form.
With the latest constitutional amendment, Slovakia has taken the chance to stay on the side of a civilisation that protects the weak. Not children for adults, but adults for children. Not the right of the child, but the right of the child.
Surrogacy is not progress. It is a return to a mentality in which the stronger buys the weaker. And this is exactly the world that Christianity has been warning against for two millennia.
If today society tolerates clinics that operate like international baby factories, tomorrow it will not have the moral strength to stand up to even worse forms of exploitation.
The case of the Fesko Human Reproduction Group is not a warning for the future. It is proof that a line has already been crossed. If we do not declare it unacceptable now, it is the weakest who will pay the price. The children that no one asked for as persons, but as commodities.