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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 400,000 rupees (€5,365) 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-a-womb — due to concerns women are being exploited.
Money saved
“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 nine 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.
After opening up to surrogacy in 2002, India became a world leader in the multi-million dollar industry, with hundreds of foreign couples flocking for cheap and safe services.
India tightened rules surrounding the industry in 2012 by barring gay couples and single people from using such services. Last November authorities instructed surrogacy clinics to stop accepting overseas clients.
‘Nothing immoral’
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.
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 woman’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 told AFP.
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.
Safeguards
Health experts say many that choose to become surrogates lack basic safeguards — such as medical insurance if something goes wrong during pregnancy.
There have been reports of illiterate women being pressured into signing contracts they don’t understand.
Sutapa B Neogi said surrogates are often impregnated with multiple fertilised eggs to increase the chances of pregnancy. Abortions are performed if more than one pregnancy takes hold.
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.
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It’s their own choice so your statement is a bit ridiculous.
@Fake Avast: don’t you know that poverty is a choice? this woman was probably a hoe in a previous life.
This shouldn’t be banned but regulated as this is a hope for many many couples who are without a child and does not have enough money to get this service in Europe or the USA
@Jihad.info: Why are needy couples more important than natural mothers? Why are we conditioned to adopt – I mean buy children like we buy cattle? Because in law we are all cattle. Its time to wake up -womebmen are more than breeders,
Catherine, adoption is not buying children like cattle. I don’t know what your issue is but I suggest you go and educate yourself.
Catherine, you perhaps missed the essence of the article or my comments. No one is buying children here or women. Couples who can’t naturally conceive due to medical issues, IVF is no longer an option due to issues with Uterus of the woman and couples still want their own DNA then surrogacy is an option. If you met some couples in this boat you would know what I am talking about. No offence to you as you are not alone to not fully decipher the situation.
Jeanette, thank you
No problem, Jihad. Personally I think surrogacy, regulated and controlled should be available here, however since we as a country can’t even regulate IVF, I don’t see it happening. I have major concerns about commercial surrogacy abroad because I think there’s tremendous room for exploitation but adoption is something I’m very familiar with and the amount of mis information being spouted and dressed up as fact, astounds me.
Women are more than just wombs for rent.
#LBTGpeopleAgainstSurrogacy.
Joey?
Can’t buy babies from Mother Superior in the Laundries anymore, so people go foreign to exploit poor, vulnerable women to buy their babies.
You know if you have a problem with commercial surrogacy in the developing world.. There’s nothing stopping most women taking actions to solve that problem and altruistically volunteering to be a surrogate, giving an infertile couple in your own country the gift of a child…
Except our country won’t preform IVF for surrogacy. So, you’d have to travel for that, and then when the baby is born, the woman carrying the baby is still considered the mother by law, meaning the child’s biological parents have to adopt it. We don’t have private adoption here.
Another fine example of backwards Irish Law.
Nope, Drew, can’t be done here.
Wombmen are no more than breeders/vessels under the law.
@Catherine Mill: That is the truth. My mother was bought with cows, aka marriage in the third world.
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