Bill No. 8629 about assisted reproductive treatment (ART), among the initiators of which is Iryna Lutsenko, Iryna Gerashchenko and Maria Ionova (all from Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction), foresees the introduction of age limits.

According to the bill, assisted reproductive treatment, including surrogacy maternity, could apply to women in the age from 18 to 55.

According to the explanatory note to the document, the necessity of introducing age restrictions is associated with the cases of giving the birth by elderly women to children, whose further fate due to the age of the mother may be uncertain.

The accompanying documents also said that despite a significant number of regulatory acts regulating the functioning of reproductive medicine in Ukraine, many issues remain outside the regulatory legal acts for the use of ART, which, in turn, leads to a number of problems for both reproductive clinics and for patients.

The draft document proposes to define the terms like "genetic parents", "surrogate mother", "surrogate motherhood", "in vitro fertilization", "infertility", "assisted reproductive treatment" in the law.

The document also proposes to determine that the authorized body in the field of ART is the Ministry of Health, which, within the limits of its authority, forms a policy in the field of reproductive medicine, determines the ART methods used in the country, the procedure and conditions for their application, and provides training for specialists in this field. In addition, the Ministry of Health controls compliance with the quality standards of reproductive medicine.

According to the bill, surrogate motherhood is carried out on the basis of a written agreement between the genetic parents and the woman who will bear the child. It identifies the duties of the surrogate mother in the implementation of all the recommendations of the doctor, her place of residence, the period during which she must transfer the child to the genetic parents, the actions of the parties in the case of the birth of a child with genetic diseases, congenital malformations, and also in the case of multiple births.

In addition, the contract prescribes the amount of compensation (if any) for the surrogate mother, as well as the procedure for reimbursement of expenses for her medical care, food and lodging for the period of bearing the child. In this case, if the surrogate mother is married, the husband's consent (written and endorsed by a notary) to this procedure is mandatory for signing a contract between her and the genetic parents.

The document also proposes to fix in the law the compulsory genetic connection of the child with at least one of the parents who applied for medical assistance with the use of ART, as well as the lack of a genetic connection between the child and the surrogate mother.

An obligatory condition for the use of surrogate motherhood is that the patient, who needs ART services, has medical evidence saying that the bearing/birth of a child is physiologically impossible or associated with a risk to life.

In addition, it is provided that only a married couple staying in a registered marriage can use the surrogate motherhood services. Persons of one sex, as well as stateless persons cannot resort to this method of infertility treatment. Foreign citizens receive ART services in accordance with the requirements of the current legislation.

The bill also spells out the rights and duties of the surrogate mother and persons in relation to whom this method of treatment is applied.