The Cheapest Womb: India’s Surrogate Mothers
From Ms. Magazine’s blog, June 25
The Akanksha Infertility Clinic is a small pastel building inside a walled compound. Located in Anand, India, the clinic is one of hundreds in the country offering the local women as commercial surrogates. For a fraction of what it can cost in the United States, infertile couples or single parents can hire a woman to stay in the hostel for nine months and bear their child.
Potential surrogates recruited by the Akanksha Clinic are healthy married Indian women who have children of their own. Once a party to the agreement, they can no longer live at home, have sexual contact with their husband and must leave older children behind to live at the hostel. They sleep nine to a room, are administered daily iron shots and follow a closely monitored diet.
The increasing popularity of outsourcing pregnancy to countries like India, Thailand and Cambodia poses urgent questions about the connections between global inequality and the commodification of the female body. Currently, commercial surrogacy is legal in India because no law exists to prohibit the practice. This means that there are also few safeguards protecting the rights of surrogate mothers.
In its next legislative session, the Indian Parliament is set to debate a bill entitled “The Assisted Reproductive Technology Act,” which will regulate the growing industry. One problematic part of the bill says that a surrogate must waive all her rights during the pregnancy. Even the option of “fetal reduction,” abortion, is a decision that can only be made by her doctor or the genetic parents.
2 comments
What forces are in place to protect women from becoming for profit “breeders” of workers for businesses and other persons interested in workers de-linked from families or their culture of orientation? As a group of humans de-linked from kingroups, these children may be more easily exploited for a lifetime, as was the case during the American plantation slavery era. Given the vulnerability of the masses of poor families (and women) in India, who will protect the interests of the women?
Another issue–Why should forced separation from one’s family structure be a requirement of a surrogate mother? This seems like a remnant of old migratory labor patterns similar to those practiced under apartheid South Africa. Mining companies would hold mine workers hostage during a certain period, housing them in hostels, allowing them to leave the work area once every 6 or 9 months to visit their home country and marital partners. These policies can be damaging to families, even though they provide income. I certainly would like to read the issues debated in this upcoming session of the Indian Parliament. Please keep tracking this issue.
i cannot believe it! this is just plain wrong!
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