Poor fear losing ‘a lifetime opportunity’ if industry closes

About 2,000 mainly poor Indian women earn a relative fortune every year carrying babies for others

There have been conflicting views from women activists and scholars who claim surrogacy is a survival strategy for some women. To qualify, a couple must be man and woman, married legally for at least five years and medically certified as unfit to have children.

A woman seeking a surrogate child should be between 23 and 50 years and her husband should be between 26 and 55 years of age. The surrogate must be married and a ‘close relative’ of the couple and should have birthed a healthy child before the surrogacy. The woman will be permitted to be a surrogate only once in her lifetime. Importantly, she cannot receive any money for her ‘selfless’ act. A surrogate child will have equal rights as any other biological or adopted child over property.

Who is barred?

conveniently abandoned not given visas.”

While Swaraj described the bill as a “revolutionary step” towards women’s welfare, a young couple from Delhi, contemplating going in for surrogacy, is left wondering what to make of the draft law that proposes ‘altruistic surrogacy’.

“It’s not akin to borrowing your sister or sister-in-law’s outfit for a function or requesting them to share a recipe! The bill has suddenly made surrogacy an impossible option for almost everyone. The government has no right to decide when and how we should have the child,” the wife said.

Strangely, couples married for two years can adopt, but to have a baby through surrogacy they have to (as per the bill) wait for five years. The government’s contention is that the five-year window has been provided to married couples to ensure that the option of having a child through natural means and through Assisted Reproductive Technology treatments has been exhausted.

However, activists feel surrogacy regulation is a distant dream. Citing an example, Shah said, “We have the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, which was enacted to ban sex selection and put an end to the practice of selective abortion of female foetuses. But how it has failed, is known to all. Similarly, banning surrogacy will only increase corruption and make it just like the kidney transplant business, wherein it has become easy to get a kidney donor through touts.”

She challenged the reasoning of the bill emphasised by Swaraj, who said, “In commercial surrogacy one would just pay the surrogate mother and ensure that the mother and baby never come in touch. But in this (altruistic) case it is an open thing. There are no ethical issues. The child would know who the biological mother is because it is a close relative.”

The activist questioned: “The pertinent point is — will it be a comfortable situation for any child to know who the ‘real’ mother is?” when

At a hostel for dozens of pregnant women, impoverished widow Sharmila Mackwan weighs up her decision to carry twins for another couple - her only ticket out of poverty - as the government moves to close India’s multi-million dollar surrogacy industry.

She has left her own children at an orphanage for the whole nine months of her pregnancy because her contract stipulates she has to stay at the housing facility, which is attached to the hospital she will deliver at in western Gujarat state.

She also knows the Rs400,000 (Dh22,000 $6,000) she will eventually earn for safely giving birth to the twins will change her family’s fortunes.

But authorities are planning to ban the controversial commercial practice - dubbed rent-awomb - due to concerns women are being exploited.

“Surrogacy should stay as otherwise I would have never been able to save so much money even if I had slogged all my life,” said Mackwan, who plans to use the money to send her sons, aged 9 and 12, to school and to build a small house.

“I am quite scared as I am carrying twins for the first time. But what can I do? I am just hoping God will take care of me,” the 31-year-old added, as she eased into a chair at the hostel’s dormitory, where some 60 women sleep in beds side by side in spacious rooms.

Mackwan, who is four months pregnant, is among about 2,000 mainly poor Indian women who earn a relative fortune every year carrying babies for others.

India’s 2,000-odd clinics charge couples between $20,000 and $30,000, a fraction of the price in the US and other Western countries, while offering modern technology, skilled doctors and a steady supply of surrogates.

But Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said such services were being misused, with the proposed new law aimed at protecting the welfare of the women.

“Many so-called childless couples were misusing the wombs of poor women. It was a matter of great worry because there were instances where a girl child or disabled child have been abandoned soon after birth,” she said.

Outcry

The proposed law, which still has to be passed by parliament, sparked an outcry among couples desperate for a family, along with heated debate in India about the ethics of hiring out a women’s body.

At a busy private hospital in Gujarat’s Anand town, which has become India’s surrogacy capital, fertility specialist Nayana Patel warned of the dangers of banning, instead of regulating, the industry.

“Anything you try to ban totally will happen underground. People will find other ways and means and that would be even worse,” said Patel who has helped deliver 1,124 babies over the years at Akanksha hospital.

Patel also said the ban would deny scores of poor women “a lifetime opportunity” to financially improve their lives.

“She is not doing anything immoral. She is not breaking a family, she is making a family and when she is doing such a noble deed who are we to point a finger at her and say you are selling your womb,” Patel said.

At the hostel attached to the hospital, Mackwan can rest and her diet and health are monitored to ensure a safe birth.

The stay away from her home town also offers a reprieve from the social stigma of being a surrogate.

She concedes she is concerned about her sons in the orphanage but feels she made the right decision to carry twins for an Indian couple.

“My drunkard husband killed himself just before I delivered my (own) second baby. My in-laws threw me out and I had no one else to turn to,” said Mackwan, who normally earns a pittance undertaking odd jobs.

Under the new law, only married Indian couples will be allowed to opt for surrogacy and only then by using an unpaid close relative, said Swaraj.

But 26-year-old surrogate Jagruti Bhoi and others at the hostel criticised the government, saying it knew little of the decisions facing poor women.

“It is easy for the ministers to sit in their plush offices and make decisions for us poor,” Bhoi said.

“In our hearts we know we are doing something that will help our families and also those sisters longing to have babies of their own.”

Fertility specialist