A fertility center in Heraklion: The dreams
of dozens of childless couples are contained in these tanks –
eggs and embryos frozen at -196 degrees Celsius.
The director of the Genesis Fertility Clinic says
some of them will be carried to term by surrogate mothers – quite legally.
We do a lot of surrogates.
But we always advise people to bring their own surrogates,
a sister, a friend, a mother.
Contrary to most of the European Union, surrogate motherhood
is allowed in Greece, as lawyer Maria Papadaki explains.
But it remains an exception and it’s not meant to be a business model.
It is allowed, offering these services only selflessly,
only for altruism, and not for money-making,
because if you make money through this business
then the crime of human trade is very close.
Yet that's exactly what happened on the Greek island of Crete –
and on a grand scale.
The journalist Fani Nikiforaki has researched a number of cases.
She took us to a holiday village on the island's west coast,
where dozens of surrogate mothers were housed until they gave birth.
They were kept here in an absolutely controlled environment.
They didn't have to take care about anything.
They were women mainly from Georgia, Romania, Moldova, and after delivery,
this amount of 10,000 to 15,000, that was the payment for them.
The scandal came to light in the summer of 2023.
The tranquil port of Chania was rocked
by police raids and arrests.
A gynecologist who turned out to be the head of a criminal organization
was arrested — accused of human trafficking.
More than 100 women from very poor backgrounds are
thought to have been lured to this private clinic to be surrogate mothers.
Nikiforaki has found out that couples from all over the world
paid up to 120,000 euros for their dream child.
Now closed, the clinic is no longer making millions
from the surrogacy business.
But Nikiforaki strongly believes that there are
other cases still happening today.
Still the market exists because there is the need
for couples to have babies,
and couples more and more have problems with fertility.
She says that the Greek authorities have not clamped down
on illegal surrogacy and human trafficking.
There was not enough judicial supervising of this process,
taking care, all this money, all these women coming
and exiting the country.
I believe that it was hypocritical.
Local doctors, like Manolis Karavitakis are
concerned about this kind of medical tourism.
He explains that surrogate mothers sometimes look after
newborns in intensive care at the state hospital of Chania.
He says he was shocked by the behavior of some parents-to-be.
We saw them sometimes, not a lot of times,
and then they took the baby and they went away.
It's not a box.
It's a human.
It's a newborn baby.
But for some people, children are commodities
and women in need can be hired to give birth.
Fani Nikiforaki fears that such practices could
once again flourish in Greece.