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Strollerderby
Hiring a Surrogate Mom in India is About to Get Harder
Renting a womb in India is about to get harder.
The Indian government, in the wake of several fertility and surrogacy scandals, wants to begin regulating the arrangements between fertility clinics, families who wish to conceive a child, and the women who carry those children.
India is widely considered the world capital of international surrogacy, the go-to place for would-be American and European moms who cannot carry a fetus to term. Their motive for choosing an Indian surrogate is usually money: hiring a surrogate in India generally costs between $20,000-$25,000, a fraction of what it would cost in the United States. However, as surrogacy arrangements are made privately through the countries IVF clinics, the payment and treatment the gestational mothers receive varies widely.
As a result, Indian government officials are drafting legislation that would ban IVF clinics from brokering the surrogacy transactions, instead setting up a quasi-official body known as an “ART bank” that would do the matchmaking instead. The law would also, in an effort to protect maternal health, set a limit of five pregnancies per surrogate and ban women over 35 from carrying the children of other women altogether. There is also a provision stating that the adoptive parents’ countries guarantee citizenship for the child, an issue that has been a problem for some German couples, because surrogacy is illegal in their country.
What the new laws would not do, alas, is take away the desperate economic circumstances that lead many Indian women to agree to become surrogates for foreign couples in the first place. As one Indian woman explained in The Wall Street Journal, carrying the child of an American family for nine months was a much better option than her only other money-making opportunity: selling a kidney.
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Photo: Steve Evans
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6 Comments
megan commented on Jun 11 10 at 10:33 pmIt is really unfair to say that the motives of people going to India for surrogacy is money. It is not. Most of us have exhausted all our options and our funds and cannot afford to go to USA for surrogacy. Your article implies couples have the money to go to USA. It also implies that if we had the money iwe should go to USA for surrogacy. This is demeaning to Indian women who just as capable, if not more capable, and just as willing to act as a surrogate for an infertile couple as an American woman is. The amjority of parents through surrogacy in India are so very grateful to their surrogate they pay large bonuses, and some even set up long-term trust funds for their surrogate’s children so they can continue to give back for the great blessing they have been given. It is so offensive to imply we are cheap, therefore we go to cheap india over USA.
fff commented on Jun 17 10 at 1:11 pmMaybe people should not be so narcissistic and selfish and just adopt one of the many hundreds of thousands of orphaned children who need homes, instead of spending all this money on surrogacy. If you really want a child, and a family, it shouldn’t matter what color that child is or where they came from; once they are with you, they are your child. Surrogacy is the height of self-love – it’s more about YOU and what YOU want, then it is about having a family.
It IS cheaper to go to India, whether you want to acknowledge the undercutting or not; many of these women are forced to have C-sections and are denied natural births; the conditions of their surgeries are often dangerous and life-threatening; many of these surgeries are not even performed in proper hospitals. They and their surrogate babies are treated like commodities – baby makers at a baby farm. Just because you put some money into a bank account and give some bonus pay, doesn’t mean the process by which your baby was obtained was a healthy, safe and fully mutually beneficial endeavor.
It’s far more admirable to put the selfish desire to just have a baby that is MINE MINE MINE aside and look into adoption. The idea that people go to such extremes just to carry on genetic material when they claim it’s really about just having a child, having a family, having something to love, is complete bull. People should at least own up to the reality of it.
Bharati commented on Jun 22 10 at 1:36 pmSome likely outcomes of ART bill 2010
To comprehend these out comes we have to make some assumptions just as the drafting committee has made.1) All surrogates are bad, do it only for money. Cause they are poor. May not be true
2) There won’t be /should not be any emotional attachment with the child. Cause even if they have they can not get even visiting rights May not be true .3) All commissioning parents need their child even if it is handicapped. May not be true 4) All commissioning parents are just within the reach of Indian law .May not be true.5) All ART centers abide by the law they just wont fudge the documents 6) All officials are prompt. May not be trueIf the commissioning parents doesn’t want the child after the surrogate getting pregnant and if they reside in a foreign country and wont return to get the child, as per the law child goes for adoption agency and may remain in an orphanage for a long time. This may happen in case of single and gay parents abroad. Cause for them a child becomes some money and a masturbation .There is no way to protect the child and financially help the surrogate mother. Surrogate becomes a looser, Even if there is a local care taker he/she won’t be guarantee for the surrogate’s fee so as the Indian govt.
If the commissioning parents reside in foreign lands and defaults payments/ dies in case of single parents law can not reach them in case of gays what if the sperm donor dies before the child is taken to the home country, to whom the child will be given, In the case even if they are alive can we get them extradited? It is impossible.
As per the assumptions of the drafting committee it seems that all surrogates are bad When they create a child just for getting money what if they spoil the child by taking some detrimental drugs that may retard the growth / may cause some decrease in mental ability such drugs are freely available in market. And some are there in alternative medicines ,Developed to harass the enemies in a stealthy manner. This can be done if there is no emotional attachment with the child and enimity/hatred towards the commissioning parents.
Even if there is law officials can visit the centers once in a while to monitor. Till then the centers will be autonomous. They can/will do what ever they want to do. Even if they are caught in the act the rich centers will have various means to get out.
So the law is detrimental to the health of the child, Wont help either the commissioning parents or the surrogate it only helps to enforce the surrogates to give up their child. And helps the centers to make a child for any one who has money to spend.
Rich couple commented on Jul 23 10 at 4:36 amI am extremely pleased to read this article. People in India or anywhere in the world should be informed about this atrocious acts. Rich and Selfish couple who can have a child use surrogacy for various reasons, one of which include not wanting to lose their model-like figure! they can easily hire a crooked doctor to make up an excuse that it is simply “NOT recommended “that she concieve the child. it’s ridiculous.
What about men without a wife who buys donated eggs from black Market turning to this method?
These caring and loving indian women should not be exploited by these scumbags and should be informed about the darker reality of surrogacy.
I am all against surrogacy. I think it’s the most vile and dehumanizing thing that can be done to a woman’s body and selfless nature.
TTT commented on Aug 01 10 at 10:42 pmRich couple,
You are a selfish and evil monster.
You are preventing women from CHOOSING to be a surrogate. You are against choice for women, and thus against feminism.
If women in India can earn money this way, and help others as well, it should continue. You are just jealous.
megan commented on Dec 16 10 at 5:37 amMy son was recently born through surrogacy in India. he is perfect in every way. So is our surrogate, whom is now living a very nice life, yes, we are still in touch, and yes we still care for her a great deal, as she does us. She wants to carry for us again. We were not given the option of adopting. before you cast your stones, get some real information. And any of you have children – why didn’t YOu adopt one of the Millions of homeless children around the world? How selfish of YOU to create more children when so many need homes.
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