Indian Surrogacy: Economic Opportunity or Blatant Exploitation?

I was bored today, so I was watching CNN-IBN to pass my time. As is usual lately, they were doing an expose on something or another, so I started following it as best I could with their shoddy subtitling. (Their stories are usually great, why can't they do a better job at translation and subtitling?)

This particular investigation was about the growing phenomenon, especially in economically disadvantaged areas, of women serving as surrogate mothers. While this practice is more common in the US and Europe, it is fairly new to India. The process involves a couple who cannot have children contracting with a third party to carry their child. Depending on circumstances, usually the child is conceived outside the surrogate using as much of the couple's genetic material as possible (i.e. the woman's egg and the man's sperm, if both are viable), which is then implanted into the surrogate mother.

Women choose to be surrogates for a number of reasons, but in India the primary motivating factor is money. Poor women hear about this opportunity and think "why not?" For some it presents an opportunity to make lakhs, depending on the deal they are able to strike. It represents to them a way to possibly pull themselves out of grinding poverty without having to sell an organ or resort to something worse.

They interviewed surrogates who had contracted with various couples, both foreign and domestic. There were mixed results, as you might expect. One woman acted as a surrogate for an unidentified Asian couple, and the surrogate and the adoptive mother became very close friends. However, some surrogates commented they never saw or heard from the adoptive family. Some were fine with that, preferring to keep it more of a business transaction, while others felt used.

In other countries, surrogacies are strictly regulated. The contracts are standardized and there are laws to protect both the surrogate and the adoptive couple. Not so in India. Usually it is the adoptive couple who have the money to afford lawyers and contracts; the surrogate may not even be able to read or write. And in the other countries the adoptive couple pays for pre-natal healthcare for the surrogate, also usually giving a stipend to ensure adequate nutrition for her and the growing baby. In India there are no such requirements.

So basically, it is up to the morality of the adoptive couple. They can come and either treat the surrogate as the human being facilitating the birth of a valuable life, or they can take terrible advantage. And because the surrogate mother's name is on the birth certificate until the baby is adopted by the couple, if anything goes wrong with the baby, the couple could theoretically abandon it leaving the surrogate with quite a mess. Of course the contract says they will take the child, but what will this woman know?

Clearly there needs to be intervention, both from the medical community and on the legal side with how surrogacy is handled in India. There needs to be protection for the surrogates, and they need to be educated about the process. Medically speaking, women should be limited on how many times they can be a surrogate (taking into account how many times they have given birth previously, and also their current health status), and they need to be given proper medical care funded by the adoptive couple. They should also receive counsel on the legal ramifications of the contract they are about to enter into, as well as psychological counseling on the emotional impact of carrying and then giving away a child. There should also be protection for the couple, so that this does not become some sort of racket ruled by unscrupulous doctors and baby brokers, where money is collected and no baby ever comes.

At the end of the day, the surrogates have the most at stake. It is appalling to think that anyone would ask someone to carry their child and not take the smallest interest in that person's health and well-being. But then again, exploitation of the poor and under-educated is nothing new.

I am not against surrogacy per se. I think it affords the opportunity for childless couples to possibly have a child that is genetically theirs, where the possibility would not otherwise exist. It can also give a woman a way to do something selfless while also earning a huge amount of money for her family. If handled correctly, it could be a fulfilling experience for both the couple and the surrogate. However, without laws and proper guidelines to govern this process, it seems that in India it will become just another way to exploit this country's poor and desperate.