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Ukrainian serviceman kisses his wife who was visiting him during a short break from his frontline duty, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at the train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine February 14, 2024.
Frozen legacy: The battle for posthumous parenthood in Ukraine
Yehor Terekhov and his wife Anna had always planned to have children. But when Yehor was injured on the front lines of the war in Ukraine, they decided to freeze that possibility — literally. The couple, who live in Kyiv, decided to preserve Yehor’s sperm in case he didn’t return from his next tour of duty. “At war, anything can happen,” he says. “It is always good to have a Plan B.”
For Yehor, 44, the decision wasn’t just personal; it was also political. He saw it as a way “to preserve the genes of the Ukrainians, especially the ones who are ready to sacrifice their lives.”
Yehor and Anna are among the thousands of couples in Ukraine who have frozen reproductive material since the war broke out in 2022. Most fertility clinics have offered the service for free or at reduced prices to military members.
Until recently, the law had nothing specific to say about using those specimens even after their donors were killed. So fertility clinics – which are common in a country that was once a world leader in surrogacy and IVF – simply required notarized contracts permitting spouses to use the sperm if the men died in combat.
Then, in November 2023, the Ukrainian Parliament passed legislation requiring clinics to destroy the sperm of soldiers killed in combat. Some lawmakers opposed posthumous reproduction on religious grounds, and others worried about the costs of cryopreservation.
But many couples were not informed of the change.
That was when Olena Babich, a Kyiv-based lawyer who has worked in Ukrainian maternity law for 20 years, took to Facebook to write about a widow who had recently learned she could no longer use her husband's sperm.
“How,” she asked, “do you explain to a grief-stricken woman who, just a couple of months ago, was drawing up documents with her husband to have a child, that while her husband was defending the state and died, our lawmakers literally deprived him of the right to be a father after his death?"
The post caused a huge public outcry. It was shared over 10,000 times and generated 1,500 comments, many of which accused the government of destroying future generations of Ukrainians, spurring Ukrainian MPs to take to the comment section to defend themselves. Many government officials wrote they did not understand what they were voting for and promised to rectify the legislation.
Ukraine’s parliament voted to revise the bill in February. Under the new law, which takes effect in April, the government will now pay for the collection and preservation of servicemen’s sperm for up to three years. It will allow for post-mortem use as long as it is explicitly permitted in the deceased soldier’s will.
“It was one of the rare cases when one Facebook post changed the legislation of the country,” says Babich.
Still, Babich is not satisfied with the revised legislation. While the government is paying for cryopreservation, there is no program to assist widows with the costs of artificial insemination, she says. In Ukraine, the cost of that service can range up to $1,000, no small amount in a country where the average monthly wage is $388.
Ukraine isn’t the only country grappling with whether fallen soldiers can father children. Ukraine is now one of just 12 countries that have legalized posthumous reproduction. Supporters of the procedure say it’s a way to preserve soldiers’ bloodlines. But there are many thorny ethical and legal questions surrounding using the sperm of the deceased.
In Israel, where the procedure has been legal since 2003, the government expanded the service after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. It is now legal to retrieve sperm from soldiers shortly after they are killed in battle. However, in Israel, it is largely the parents of the deceased, not the widows, who are fighting for the right to have grandchildren.
Some critics of posthumous reproduction have called it “planned orphanhood” and say it’s unethical to produce a child who may grow up without one or both of their parents. Others continue to object on religious grounds — IVF of any kind can involve the disposal of embryos, which they consider to be living beings.
But for couples like Yehor and Anna, it’s about leaving behind living monuments to bravery.
“To the people who are fighting,” says Yehor, who has deployed again to the front lines in Donetsk, “it is important to know that they are preserving their bloodlines.”
Texas Supreme Court stands firm on limiting abortion access
This reversal in the Lone Star State, renowned for its stringent abortion laws, came just mere hours after Cox's legal team revealed her decision to journey beyond Texas borders to undergo the procedure. The court asserted that the lower court erred in deeming Cox, more than 20 weeks pregnant, eligible for a medical exemption, contending that her doctor couldn't substantiate the pregnancy seriously threatened her health. Texas' abortion prohibitions allow the procedure solely in instances where a woman's health or life is jeopardized.
This ruling, specific to Cox's current pregnancy, signals the court's broader reluctance to approve abortions beyond the most serious medical cases. Cox was the first adult pregnant woman to seek a court-permitted termination of her pregnancy since Roe v. Wade passed in 1973. As a test case, Texas’ precedent could influence the rulings in various other states with abortion bans, where legal challenges have surfaced as physicians argue that the bans impede abortions even in cases of severe pregnancy complications, sparking a complex and contentious legal landscape.
The "global obsession" with controlling women’s bodies
When asked what most surprised her when she became the UN's top global advocate for gender equality, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka didn't hesitate. "The obsession about controlling women's bodies is really something that also shocked me when I got to the UN." The constant objections she fielded around women's rights and reproductive rights, regardless of where in the world they were coming from, was not something Mlambo-Ngcuka was prepared for. And that's especially true, she says, for the United States.
Mlambo-Ngcuka's conversation with Ian Bremmer is part of the latest episode GZERO Word, which began airing on US public television stations nationwide on Friday, March 19. Check local listings.
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: Why the pandemic has been worse for women: UN Women's Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Women’s movements to watch right now
This Monday, March 8, is International Women's Day, a holiday with roots in a protest led by the Russian feminist Alexandra Kollontai that helped topple the czar of Russia in 1917. More than a hundred years later, amid a global pandemic that has affected women with particular fury, there are dozens of women-led protests and social movements reshaping politics around the globe. Here we take a look at a few key ones to watch this year.
Mexico. Latin America's second most populous country heads into March 8 embroiled in a major #MeToo political scandal, as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador defends a powerful member of his party accused of sexual harrassment and rape. That alone is fueling what are likely to be sizable protests this weekend, but there are two other big issues that have spurred the women of Mexico to action in recent years. The first is a growing crisis of femicide — in Mexico last year, a woman was killed every 8 hours (Spanish). The numbers got worse during the pandemic, when quarantine rules forced many women to stay at home with abusive partners or family members. The second is the growing movement to change Mexico's restrictive abortion laws, which strictly limit the procedure in most places outside the capital city. While public opinion is divided on the issue, feminist leaders in Mexico are looking to the recent success of the abortion-legalization movement in Argentina — part of a broader "Green Tide" of feminist organization and power across Latin America.
Poland. Earlier this year, the Polish government approved a draconian new abortion law — now among the strictest in the EU — that all but eliminates women's right to terminate pregnancies legally. Throughout the pandemic, protest groups led by women have hit the streets in opposition to the measure, which is supported by the ruling rightwing Law and Justice Party, but opposed by a majority of Poles. And while protests have died down since the law was passed, it will be a fresh focus this weekend. More broadly, the debate over abortion has become a totem of the wider cultural and political clash in Poland, which pits a conservative national government with strong ties to the Catholic Church and a largely rural political base against an increasingly liberal opposition in the country's big cities. Polish pro-choice activists face an uphill battle, but again — so too did those in Argentina, where the campaign lasted some 15 years.
India. By now you've doubtless heard about the massive farmers protests roiling New Delhi. (If not, see here.) But you've probably heard less about the sizable role that women are playing in the movement, as participants, speakers, and organizers. It's not hard to see why. Consider that 80 percent of working women in India are employed in the farming sector, and half of India's self-employed farmers are women. That means the government's new agriculture liberalization laws — which farmers worry will put them at the mercy of conglomerates — will have a huge impact on India's hundreds of millions of rural women. This issue has become the single biggest political crisis of otherwise-popular Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tenure.
Australia. In Australia, a rape allegation made by a former staffer for the ruling Liberal party has dominated the country's politics in recent weeks, causing a stream of women to come forward with stories of sexual harrasment and assault in Australia's Parliament House, including a separate decades-old allegation of rape against the current Attorney General. Brittany Higgins, an alleged victim who has become the face of the growing movement, says she felt silenced by the government after coming forward in 2019, prompting Prime Minister Scott Morrison to call for an inquiry into the parliament's "workplace culture." A slew of female politicians — from parties across the spectrum — have left politics in recent years because of what many say is the pervasive misogyny of Canberra's old boys' club. (You may recall former Prime Minister Julia Gillard's now-famous misogyny speech from parliament in 2012.)
Japan. Around the globe, women have suffered disproportionately from COVID's social and economic aftershocks. In Japan — where biases that disadvantage women are deeply ingrained — that toll has been especially pronounced: about 7,000 Japanese women committed suicide in 2020, a 15 percent annual increase (the number of Japenes men who committed suicide decreased from the previous year). While the subjugation of Japanese women is not new — Japan currently ranks 121st out of 153 countries on the World Economic Forum's annual Gender Gap list — the way that women in particular are responding to the issue is new. More assertive women's right advocates and groups have begun mobilizing to shine light on the conditions that lead to Japanese women's experiences of alienation, helplessness, and depression. One particular focus in recent years has been the push for reforms to the country's archaic rape laws, which critics say place an unreasonably high burden of proof on alleged victims (victims need to prove that they "fought back" during an assault).
Bottom line: International Women's Day can sometimes fall prey to a kind of cultural kitsch, with lazy appeals to "girl power" and cringey hashtags. But for many women around the world, it's a day to celebrate how far societies have come in the fight for equality, and to reflect on how far we still have to go.
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