There has been a recent rise in Indian surrogacy. Many celebrity parents decide to use surrogates for various fertility and personal reasons. For example, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick have children born of a surrogate along with Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.
What is Indian Surrogacy?
Indian surrogacy is the act of having a woman in India carry a baby that is not her own in exchange for healthcare, room, and board, and usually some small payment for her time and inconvenience. The Indian surrogate received a fertilized embryo created through in-vitro fertilization, which is often called test tube babies.
Benefits of Indian Surrogacy?
Some argue that there are many benefits to surrogacy. For many the cost is comparable to that of an adoption. But there is also the added benefit of having a biological child and sharing a deeper genetic bond. However, there are many that would argue that there are many children in need of good parents and adoption is a better choice.
But many are now choosing to outsource their surrogacy to Indian women. An apparently there are even matchmakers of sorts that make this happen. While the cost of Indian surrogacy is unclear, there are many Indian surrogacy agencies that you can explore. A press release I received stated that Crystal Travis is a go-to consultant for those wanting an Indian surrogacy.
I approach this topic with great concern and consideration.
Surrogacy actually has many benefits. The parents gain a child they were unable (or sometimes merely unwilling) to gestate on their own. The surrogate mothers benefit from improved healthcare and monetary compensation. In reality, many surrogate mothers would not make the type of income they make from surrogacy in any other way. This is especially true for women in India.
Is Surrogacy Slavery?
But then again, there is this little voice in the back of my head that makes me question whether this could be compared to female slavery. I wonder if these mothers really enjoy being pregnant with the child of others or if they simply have no other means of income. How much of the money does the Indian surrogacy agency keep? How do their children and other family react when the pregnancy is over and there is no new baby in the house?
In a country where 32.7% fall beneath the international standards for poverty, is surrogacy a glimmer of hope to India mother’s struggling to feed there own children? Or perhaps surrogacy is way to escape a life of forced prostitution.
We have to question if this is right. If it’s ok to have surrogate mothers carry your baby, is it ok to genetically engineer your child as well? Where do we draw the line between what is medically possible and what is ethical and appropriate?
Over 25,000 surrogate babies are born to Indian mothers annually. And according to Travis, “Surrogacy is a 2.3 billion dollar industry in India.” There are far fewer laws in India in regards to surrogacy. This keeps the costs down to the prospective parents. But one has to wonder what the costs are to the human condition of the women involved in the business professional pregnancies.
Source: Press release from www.worldofsurrogacy.com
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I know somebody who had surrogacy from Mexico and they were happy to do it because it was cheap. They had a healthy baby boy who’s now 3 years old.
I think it can have some wonderful outcomes for families who are not able to carry a child on their own.
Is surrogacy for convenience an appropriate use of a wonderful technology that was originally developed to allow barren couples to produce natural offspring? I’m not saying it is or it isn’t. Your posting simply gave me pause. I have the same question about legal abortion which was originally allowed for cases of incest, rape, or to protect the mother, and is now used for birth control, sex selection, and a myriad of other reasons. Or are these unintended bad consequences of good intentions? Never fear. Whenever we think we are catching up with the moral dilemmas of our day, technology will create some new ones for us.
This is really interesting topic here. I am all for it, though. It brings a lot of $-s into the economy of India, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, as long as the middle men don’t exploit everything.