India's new outsourcing business - wombs

There's more than one way to get an adoptee.

I have to wonder how these women and the children they bear will feel about this in the future.

Money, money, money.

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India's new outsourcing business - wombs
June 16, 2006
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - It is a new dimension to outsourcing. An increasing number of couples are coming to India in search of cheaper fertility treatments, donor eggs and surrogate mothers. After turning to Indians to answer customer-service calls, the West, it seems, is now turning to them to carry their babies.

For couples looking for fertility treatment, India is an attractive destination. They can avail themselves of treatment at a relatively low cost. Besides, it is easier finding a surrogate mother here, and the cost of renting her womb to carry the fertilized egg is a fraction of what it would be back home.

In-vitro fertilization treatment involves the fertilization of the egg and sperm in a test tube. Once fertilized, the embryo is transferred into the uterus of the biological mother. In some cases, where the biological mother's medical condition does not permit her to carry the fetus, a surrogate mother does the job. In the United States, a couple would have to fork out about US$15,000 to the surrogate mother and another $30,000 to agencies involved. In India, they can do this on a smaller budget - the entire cost ranges between $2,500 and $5,000.

"Reproductive tourism" - as this trade is being referred to - is a booming business. Valued at more than $450 million in India, the industry is growing at a rapid pace. While exact figures are hard to come by, it is said that the number of cases of surrogacy has doubled over the past three years.

As in the case of the outsourcing industry in general, the low cost of the service provided by an Indian surrogate mother is the reason for India's emergence at the forefront of the reproductive tourism business. But there are other factors that make India attractive. One is the high-quality health care available in private hospitals, which provide Westerners with excellent health facilities at a fraction of the cost back home. This has in fact turned India into a place where foreigners come for medical treatment.

There are other placees such as Eastern Europe, Russia and China that offer these benefits, but India scores on another point as well - the availability of English-speaking doctors.

India's laws favor reproductive tourists. Unlike in Britain, for instance, where a surrogate mother who has contributed the egg can claim the baby she has delivered as her own at any time during the first two years of the child's life, in India the surrogate mother signs away her rights to the baby as soon as she has delivered it. Furthermore, in India implanting of five embryos into the womb of the surrogate mother is permissible. In Britain, a maximum of two is allowed.

It is mainly women from the lower middle class who are offering to be surrogate mothers. They earn about $2,500, which is big money in a country where the per capita annual income is just $500 and where about 35% of the population lives on less than $1 a day.

On the face of it, everyone - the doctors in the business, the middlemen who arrange the deals and the surrogate mothers - are smiling. "It's a win-win situation," said a doctor in Mumbai.

Doctors in the reproductive-tourism business bristle when they are accused of engaging in unethical practice or when their trade is compared to another booming business - the trade in kidneys. After all, both are exploitative, feeding off the poverty of the donor/surrogate mother. But they insist that there is no exploitation, that the surrogate mother is well looked after by the couple paying for her services. The latter apparently ensure that she eats well when she is carrying the baby. The doctors claim they ensure that the surrogate mothers don't bond with the baby by constantly reminding them that the fetus in their womb is not theirs.

When asked about their feelings about having to give up the child they have carried for so many months, surrogate mothers say they are happy that their service has brought happiness to another couple. They say the money they earned will enable them to ensure a better future for their own children.

But dig deeper and their emotional anguish becomes evident.

What is more, in countries like India where women are often forced to do as ordered by husbands and in-laws, the possibility of family pressure on her to become a surrogate mother for the sake of big money cannot be ruled out. And then there is the social stigma attached to carrying the child of a man who is not her husband.

But these issues do not seem to trouble those profiting from the business. Dr Nayana Patel, director of the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in Anand (a small town in the western state of Gujarat), is at the forefront of the surrogacy business. India has the potential to become the world center for reproductive outsourcing, she says.

The "rent-a-womb business" has added a whole new dimension to India's outsourcing industry.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HF16Df03.html