New Indian Outsourcing Service: Wombs-For-Rent

[Guest guest]

New Indian Outsourcing Service: Wombs-For-Rent

Outsourcing Pregnancies to India

Dec 30, 2007

 

By SAM DOLNICK

 

ANAND, India

 

Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15

pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house

they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of

ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape

of soft hills.

 

A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the

women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere

else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand,

a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the

children of infertile couples from around the world.

 

The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile

couples with local women, cares for the women during

pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward.

Anand's surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field

of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly

40 babies.

 

More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with

the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan,

Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many

would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host

of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and

modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that

most natural of desires: to have a family.

 

Dr. Nayna Patel, the woman behind Anand's baby boom,

defends her work as meaningful for everyone involved.

 

" There is this one woman who desperately needs a baby

and cannot have her own child without the help of a

surrogate. And at the other end there is this woman who

badly wants to help her (own) family, " Patel said. " If

this female wants to help the other one ... why not allow

that? ... It's not for any bad cause. They're helping one

another to have a new life in this world. "

 

Experts say commercial surrogacy - or what has been

called " wombs for rent " - is growing in India. While

no reliable numbers track such pregnancies nationwide,

doctors work with surrogates in virtually every major

city. The women are impregnated in-vitro with the egg

and sperm of couples unable to conceive on their own.

 

Commercial surrogacy has been legal in India since

2002, as it is in many other countries, including the

United States. But India is the leader in making it a

viable industry rather than a rare fertility treatment.

Experts say it could take off for the same reasons

outsourcing in other industries has been successful: a

wide labor pool working for relatively low rates.

 

Critics say the couples are exploiting poor women in

India - a country with an alarmingly high maternal

death rate - by hiring them at a cut-rate cost to undergo

the hardship, pain and risks of labor.

 

" It raises the factor of baby farms in developing

countries, " said Dr. John Lantos of the Center for

Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Mo. " It comes down

to questions of voluntariness and risk. "

 

Patel's surrogates are aware of the risks because they've

watched others go through them. Many of the mothers

know one another, or are even related. Three sisters have

all borne strangers' children, and their sister-in-law is

pregnant with a second surrogate baby. Nearly half the

babies have been born to foreign couples while the rest

have gone to Indians.

 

Ritu Sodhi, a furniture importer from Los Angeles who

was born in India, spent $200,000 trying to get pregnant

through in-vitro fertilization, and was considering

spending another $80,000 to hire a surrogate mother in

the United States.

 

" We were so desperate, " she said. " It was emotionally

and financially exhausting. "

 

Then, on the Internet, Sodhi found Patel's clinic.

 

After spending about $20,000 - more than many

couples because it took the surrogate mother several

cycles to conceive - Sodhi and her husband are now

back home with their 4-month-old baby, Neel. They

plan to return to Anand for a second child.

 

" Even if it cost $1 million, the joy that they had

delivered to me is so much more than any money that I

have given them, " said Sodhi. " They're godsends to

deliver something so special. "

 

Patel's center is believed to be unique in offering one-

stop service. Other clinics may request that the couple

bring in their own surrogate, often a family member or

friend, and some place classified ads. But in Anand the

couple just provides the egg and sperm and the clinic

does the rest, drawing from a waiting list of tested and

ready surrogates.

 

Young women are flocking to the clinic to sign up for

the list.

 

Suman Dodia, a pregnant, baby-faced 26-year-old, said

she will buy a house with the $4,500 she receives from

the British couple whose child she's carrying. It would

have taken her 15 years to earn that on her maid's

monthly salary of $25.

 

Dodia's own three children were delivered at home and

she said she never visited a doctor during those

pregnancies.

 

" It's very different with medicine, " Dodia said, resting

her hands on her hugely pregnant belly. " I'm being more

careful now than I was with my own pregnancy. "

 

Patel said she carefully chooses which couples to help

and which women to hire as surrogates. She only

accepts couples with serious fertility issues, like

survivors of uterine cancer. The surrogate mothers have

to be between 18 and 45, have at least one child of their

own, and be in good medical shape.

 

Like some fertility reality show, a rotating cast of

surrogate mothers live together in a home rented by the

clinic and overseen by a former surrogate mother. They

receive their children and husbands as visitors during the

day, when they're not busy with English or computer

classes.

 

" They feel like my family, " said Rubina Mandul, 32, the

surrogate house's den mother. " The first 10 days are

hard, but then they don't want to go home. "

 

Mandul, who has two sons of her own, gave birth to a

child for an American couple in February. She said she

misses the baby, but she stays in touch with the parents

over the Internet. A photo of the American couple with

the child hangs over the sofa.

 

" They need a baby more than me, " she said.

 

The surrogate mothers and the parents sign a contract

that promises the couple will cover all medical expenses

in addition to the woman's payment, and the surrogate

mother will hand over the baby after birth. The couples

fly to Anand for the in-vitro fertilization and again for

the birth. Most couples end up paying the clinic less

than $10,000 for the entire procedure, including

fertilization, the fee to the mother and medical expenses.

 

Counseling is a major part of the process and Patel tells

the women to think of the pregnancy as " someone's

child comes to stay at your place for nine months. "

 

Kailas Gheewala, 25, said she doesn't think of the

pregnancy as her own.

 

" The fetus is theirs, so I'm not sad to give it back, " said

Gheewala, who plans to save the $6,250 she's earning

for her two daughters' education. " The child will go to

the U.S. and lead a better life and I'll be happy. "

 

Patel said none of the surrogate mothers has had

especially difficult births or serious medical problems,

but risks are inescapable.

 

" We have to be very careful, " she said. " We overdo all

the health investigations. We do not take any chances. "

 

Health experts expect to see more Indian commercial

surrogacy programs in coming years. Dr. Indira Hinduja,

a prominent fertility specialist who was behind India's

first test-tube baby two decades ago, receives several

surrogacy inquiries a month from couples overseas.

 

" People are accepting it, " said Hinduja. " Earlier they

used to be ashamed but now they are becoming more

broadminded. "

 

But if commercial surrogacy keeps growing, some fear it

could change from a medical necessity for infertile

women to a convenience for the rich.

 

" You can picture the wealthy couples of the West

deciding that pregnancy is just not worth the trouble

anymore and the whole industry will be farmed out, "

said Lantos.

 

Or, Lantos said, competition among clinics could lead to

compromised safety measures and " the clinic across the

street offers it for 20 percent less and one in Bangladesh

undercuts that and pretty soon conditions get bad. "

 

The industry is not regulated by the government. Health

officials have issued nonbinding ethical guidelines and

called for legislation to protect the surrogates and the

children.

 

For now, the surrogate mothers in Anand seem as

pleased with the arrangement as the new parents.

 

" I know this isn't mine, " said Jagrudi Sharma, 34,

pointing to her belly. " But I'm giving happiness to

another couple. And it's great for me. "

 

http://www.wayodd.com/new-indian-outsourcing-service-wombs-for-rent/v/8698/