News agency MEDUZA interviewed a prominent Russian lawyer Mr. Konstantin N. Svitnev, C.E.O. of Rosjurconsulting law firm and “the main figurant” of so-called “Doctors’ Baby Trafficking Case”.
Many single men in Russia have fathered children through surrogacy since August 2010, when Mr. Svitnev made the Russian court first recognize men’s right to be full-fledged parents of children born by surrogate mothers. Mr. Svitnev strongly believes that these fathers are the real target of the trafficking case against his firm and a group of fertility doctors.
While homophobia obviously plays a role there, Mr. Svitnev says money is also an incentive. “The surrogacy market is worth billions of dollars in Russia alone. It’s possible that someone with ties to the authorities might have ideas about putting this industry under their own control,” he told Meduza.
A source in Russia’s Investigative Committee told recently the news agency TASS that detectives are preparing to charge several men with child trafficking on the grounds that they were ineligible for IVF donation because of their homosexuality. Mr. Svitnev says he never cared about his clients’ sexual orientation and cites Article 19 of Russia’s Constitution, which guarantees “equal rights and freedoms” and “equal possibilities to exercise them” to men and women alike. Russia’s Family Code, moreover, explicitly permits single men – same as single women to adopt children.
Mr. Svitnev says if there are no limits on adoption, no law can restrict fathers’ rights to their own children, which is what’s at stake in surrogacy.
Mr. Svitnev spent the past decade lobbying for equality in paternal rights, and he takes credit for “hundreds of court rulings” reached in favor of fathers who had children through surrogacy – including the first one reached. “Maybe that’s what did me in. On two separate occasions, I was pulled aside by very high-ranking people who hinted that I was skating on thin ice,” he says.