[URBANTH-L] NEWS: Giving Birth Becomes the Latest Job Outsourced to India as Commercial Surrogacy Takes Off

[Angela Jancius]

From: Dr. Virginia Cornue <cornue at rci.rutgers.edu>

FYI, and what a subject for research.

Virginia Cornue


Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 08:07:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Families With Children From China Greater NY GreaterNYFCC at aol.com



http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4066719
World Outsources Pregnancies to India
Giving Birth Becomes Latest Job Outsourced to India As Commercial Surrogacy 
Takes Off
By SAM DOLNICK
The Associated Press
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."


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