In the reception of the Akanksha fertility clinic, physician Nayna Patel has an article pinned to the wall. “Anand clinic creates milestone with 1,001st baby,” the headline reads.
For the past 10 years, Patel’s surrogacy services have brought couples from around the world to this small town in Gujarat. At the end of October, the government sent a notice to fertility clinics across the country ordering them to stop all surrogate embryo transfers for non-Indian passport holders. Now only a handful of women, already pregnant, are waiting to deliver the last batch of foreign surrogate babies.
At the surrogates’ quarters down the road from the clinic, a group of women are sharing their stories. Aasima, 26, from a nearby village, ushers me to sit with her on her bed.
Illustration: Mountain People
“I’ve heard surrogacy is going to stop,” she says. “But we are all praying that this place stays open. All of us here support Dr Nayna.”
She explained that most of the surrogates are here because they have no other choice.
“What are we going to do if they stop this? It’s better to do this than immoral things,” she said, implying prostitution. “So I can eat my bread with dignity.”
Aasima is three months into a pregnancy for an American couple. She gets a monthly salary of 4,000 rupees (US$60) and will get a lump sum of 390,000 rupees when she delivers. She said that the money would transform her children’s lives.
“My daughter has just turned 10. Now she’s saying that she wants to study in an English-speaking school. She’s growing up and even if I don’t have new things to wear, I want my little daughter to look nice. I have come here for her,” she said.
India is one of a handful of countries that allows women to take part in commercial surrogacy — bearing another couple’s child for money. The country has a reputation for cheap medical costs and high success rates, which makes it an attractive option for many couples.
“We had been trying IVF treatments for 17 years. We could have had our surrogacy in the UK, but we did our research and found that there’s just too much red tape,” said Sam, a British woman whose daughter was carried by a surrogate in India.
Like many, she chose surrogacy as a last resort. She said that British law allows surrogates to change their mind at any point and decide to keep the child they are carrying.
“We thought it was unfair, especially if we were going to pay for the whole procedure. And we just didn’t want to go through the whole process thinking ‘What if?’ In India, you know what you’ll get,” she said.
I asked Aasima if she feels any attachment to the baby she is carrying.
“Of course I do,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like this is my own child. Then I remind myself that I have to hand it over with dignity. I can’t get attached; I just have to think about the money.”
She came to Anand with hopes of a better future. She had her first child at 16. Her father, a Muslim who had married a high-caste Hindu, was burned alive in clashes between Hindus and Muslims at Godhra in 2002.
“My father and I were very close,” she said, smiling. “I was his favorite. If we had any sorrows to share, we’d share them with each other. He’d even do my homework for me.”
After her father’s death, Aasima’s family decided to marry her off when she was only 15.
“I have no one in my life except my children,” she said, as she took out their photographs from her wallet. “There’s no one in the world. Just my two children and I.”
Aasima has been living at the surrogate quarters since she came to the clinic. Like many of the women here, Aasima has told only her closest family members what she is doing.
“This secret needs to be buried here,” she said. “There’s no point telling people.”
Her extended family might not understand what surrogacy is and could start spreading rumors if they found out she had fallen pregnant while away from home. Her husband came with her to meet Patel, who explained the procedure to him.
“I came with his permission, otherwise tomorrow he can point the finger and say all sorts of things,” she said.
Though Aasima has not yet met the American parents of her child, her roommate Priya spoke excitedly about the Brazilian couple who chose her to be their surrogate.
“They said that they felt lucky to have a surrogate like me. We sat together for around two hours and talked. They’re both really sweet-natured. And when they met me they said immediately that I will be their surrogate,” she said.
Priya, a 28-year-old divorcee from the city of Ahmedabad, said she came to Patel’s clinic after a friend who had been a surrogate told her about it.
“The ban shouldn’t happen,” she said. “Girls like me really benefit from surrogacy.”
In the room next door, Naila who is seven months pregnant, agreed.
“This clinic is a lifeline for us,” she said. “I came here because we need to build our house.”
She told me about the gifts that the Singaporean parents of her baby send to her.
“They sent me clothes for my birthday. They send other things like dried fruit, almonds, cashew nuts,” she said.
Though the women at Akanksha have come here willingly, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, explained why the government had decided to implement the ban.
“The number of surrogacy clinics has increased in recent years and it was growing into a big, unregulated business. The ban is in response to widespread concern about the exploitation of women. Several reports said that women [mostly poor and illiterate] were being detained in hostels and used as surrogate mothers, without any safeguards for their health and wellbeing,” Swaminathan said
“There was an issue of the citizenship of children, as many countries do not recognize surrogacy and these babies therefore have no legal standing,” she said.
Swaminathan hinted that the ban was also linked to a legal battle in 2008 in which the Japanese parents of a baby born to an Indian surrogate decided they no longer wanted the child.
“Cases came to light of the baby being abandoned, because of divorce or the baby being born abnormal in some way,” she said.
Patel, who has just opened a new, state-of-the-art hospital for surrogates in Anand, said the government’s hypocrisy for banning surrogacy only for foreigners.
“It doesn’t make sense that one embryo implantation is not exploitation and the other is. If the reason is that surrogates are being exploited, then why allow it for Indians?” Patel asked.
She talked about a British couple who were on the verge of having their embryo transferred to a surrogate when the ban came into force overnight.
“That they’d been planning this, got the medical visa, taken work off, dreaming of this. They arrived here, and I told them, no, I can’t do it. They still froze embryos, in case the ban is lifted in the future. The wife was crying because she can never carry a child. So many dreams have been broken. If you could read the e-mails you would see how devastated they are,” Patel said.
“I feel very sad for them,” she said. “Why take away the basic human right of having a baby?”
She disagreed that the practice is exploitative if appropriately regulated.
“We are not in the business of ‘renting wombs.’ Rather we provide a legitimate service to those in need, whether it is the couple who desperately want a child or the woman who wishes to change her circumstances, to educate her children, build a house or pay off debts,” she said on her Web site.
Patel pointed to a picture of her own daughter on her desk.
“I always used to tell her that if she ever needs a surrogate, I will carry her baby for her. The people who would suffer the most from the ban would be foreign couples and surrogates themselves. The whole world wants to see India doing it. It was a matter of pride for India,” she said.
Back in the clinic, Aasima invited me to join her for lunch.
“I’m lucky I’ve already got my report and I’ll have my baby, but there are so many women in difficulty. I think about them too,” Aasima said, adding that after paying her daughter’s school fees, she plans to put some of the money she earns from the surrogacy in her children’s names.
“I don’t want a penny from this. Just that my children’s future is made. I want them to say after I die, that my mother she died, but she did so much for us,” she said.
Some names have been changed to protect identities
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