Paper short abstract:

In this paper I would like to explore the contradicting kinship accounts of Ukrainian egg donors in relation to their children, their traveling ova and its international recipients and examine how they reconcile their role in enabling international couples to become parents with their mandate to reproduce the Ukrainian nation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on the results of the fieldwork conducted in Ukraine during summer 2015, that included in-depth interviews with 12 Ukrainian women who donated their eggs to international recipients and 21 professionals in fertility clinics and donor recruitment agencies. I examine how these narratives reconcile the role of Ukrainian egg donors in enabling international couples to become parents with their position as mothers of their own children and of the nation. Since they are utilizing their reproductive capacities to maintain the families elsewhere, they are often not recognized as “normal” mothers by medical profession and broader public and, thus, are rendered precarious in the fulfillment of their parental and citizenship roles. As a result, they have to reclaim motherhood as constructed socially and dependent on the material conditions of life. In this way the experience of cross-border ova-donation allows them to undermine the priority of genetic connection and the necessity to be responsible for the reproduction of the nation through one’s genetic offspring. However, they are also reinforcing the motherhood and citizenship mandate for women by arguing that the main reason why they underwent egg donation was in order to take care of their children and educate them into “proper” citizens. In this paper I would like to explore these contradicting kinship accounts of Ukrainian egg donors in relation to their children, their traveling ova and its international recipients.