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.