How Ukraine plans to revive its birth rate

00:00 06:45

Svitlana Morenets has narrated this article for you to listen to.

In my village in Ukraine, there aren’t many families left intact. The funerals of those who have been killed in the war have been taking place with crushing regularity. It feels like everyone’s loss. Today, in house after house, you can find parents whose children have either died or are still fighting with no indication of when they may return. It’s almost impossible for couples to start families – men are deployed to the front line with little hope of any leave. If they return alive, most are maimed in some way.

There is, though, a spark of hope for these young Ukrainians. Ukraine has quite an advanced network of fertility clinics, which are often used in more peaceful times by foreigners taking advantage of liberal surrogacy laws. Soldiers heading to the front have begun to visit these clinics, to freeze their sperm and make a ‘biological will’, naming the woman who would have the right to use it for IVF during their deployment or even in a posthumous conception. There are a few female soldiers, too, who have done the same with their eggs.

For Ukrainians, the falling birth rate is not a side issue but is fundamental to the battle now being fought

A few months ago, rules were about to be changed to order the destruction of soldiers’ sperm in the event of their death. But following a backlash from soldiers’ partners as well as medical professionals, a new law was passed, which says that any soldier wishing to have their gametes frozen will have storage costs paid for by the state as of next year, and for three years after their death.

Successful IVF treatment has existed since1977, when Louise Brown was conceived in the UK, but posthumous IVF has triggered ethical debates for a long time.