Shabnum Nur Mohammed Sheikh’s reasons for bearing another woman’s child are straightforward: the 60 rupees (US$1.25) her husband earns from his food stall each day buys dinner, but little else.
Shabnum’s first surrogate pregnancy got her out of a shared shack in a slum and into a small flat. Her second will pay for uniforms, books, bags and eventually, she hopes, university fees for her three young daughters.
“I hope my kids will work in computers or something like that,” Shabnum, 26, said. “Then they will look after me when I’m old.”
Pushpa Pandiya, 33, also left the slums after buying a small apartment with money earned from, in her case, two surrogate pregnancies. She too has a bright young daughter.
“Education is getting very costly, but it is essential,” she said, explaining that she was about to embark on her third pregnancy for some “very nice” foreigners.
Since 2002, when the practice was legalized, India has become a world center of “surrogacy tourism.”
A relative lack of red tape and prices that are a quarter of those in the US or Europe have brought thousands of childless couples to Indian clinics to be matched with women like Shabnum and Pushpa.
The Confederation of Indian Industry predicts the business will generate US$2.3 billion annually by 2012. A recent report by the Indian Law Commission described it as a “pot of gold.”
Proposed Legislation
Radical legislation is to be introduced to bring some order to this booming, but almost unregulated sector.
One measure will make it compulsory for prospective parents to carry proof that any infant born to a surrogate mother will have automatic citizenship in their home countries in an attempt to avoid messy legal battles.
A second will stop clinics that perform the clinical procedures from sourcing, supplying and taking care of the surrogate mothers themselves.
“The IVF clinics’ job is to do IVF. We want them away from the potential areas where corruption and malpractice take place,” said Dr R.S. Sharma, secretary of the bill’s drafting committee and deputy director-general of the Indian Council for Medical Research.
The clinics are likely to resist such a move, citing the welfare of the mothers. Dr Nayna Patel, who runs the Akshanka clinic in Anand, the small town in the western state of Gujarat where Shabnum and Pushpa gave birth, said it was only her close involvement that guaranteed their safety and welfare.
“We know all the women personally. We exclude many after psychological assessments, after learning of social problems and we make absolutely sure that the money that they earn is well spent,” Patel, who pioneered the industry in India, said.
If all goes well, Pushpa and Shabnum will earn about Rs300,000 with a bonus if there are twins. If they miscarry during the first term, they will get a third of the cash.
“We don’t release the money until we see the deeds of the house they want to buy, the bank account that has been set up or whatever,” Patel said.
Dr Harsha Bhadarka, an embryologist at the clinic, said mothers spent their earnings on a house, education, to set up a business or on medical expenses. The last of these is one of the principal reasons for debt among poor Indian households, recent studies have shown.
So too is dowry. Bhardarka tries to dissuade women such as Shabnum from using money earned from surrogate pregnancies to pay a “bride price” for their daughters.
RSS