Dr Nayna Patel and surrogates at the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in Anand, India
The commercial surrogacy industry in India is worth 2.5 billion dollars. Each year Australians pay $77K for a commercial surrogacy in India.
I’ll be honest with you, commercial surrogacy in India is not a subject that I would usually delve in to. When I buy the newspaper on the weekends I admit that I barely skim the world news and if I’m really being frank sometimes I just flick through the whole thing not giving it a second thought. Why? Well, I believe we have a lot going on in our own back yard at the moment especially when it concerns the health and safety of asylum seekers – mainly children who are locked away in detention.
But this story caught my eye and unsettled me.
Australians paying women in India to have their babies are being overcharged by clinics taking advantage of the booming demand for commercial surrogacy, advocacy groups warn.
As a growing number of Australians travel to India to start a family, spending up to $80,000 and risking breaking the law, Surrogacy Australia said complaints about Indian clinics overcharging were growing.
“There is a concern surrogates are being exploited, equally there is a concern parents are being exploited,” the group’s president, Sam Everingham, said.
Having a baby is supposed to be one of the greatest times in your life. Many of us desire to have everything organised before we fall pregnant, or at least before the due date arrives but of course this is often not the case. But what bothers me is that these Australians, who are already experiencing problems with fertility, are being exploited because they are desperate to have a child of their own.
It makes me terribly sad that those mothers and fathers who so desperately want to become parents often find it the hardest to fall pregnant. And it’s not just the Australians who are being exploited. I find it hard to believe that any Indian woman, who is struggling financially, could afford not to consider being a surrogate when the industry is booming.
“Typically, Indian surrogates earn 300,000 to 400,000 rupees for carrying and delivering a baby, an amount which could take them a decade to earn in other jobs”
There is growing concern that within India’s massive, unregulated surrogacy industry that anywhere between 600 and 1000 surrogacy clinics exist, most without any oversight. Proposed laws to control surrogacy, including mandating local guardians for surrogates and limiting them to five pregnancies, have been stalled before the Indian parliament since 2010.
That only says one thing to me: Money is more important to the Indian Government than the health and wellbeing of their people. And that is just not good enough. Yes, these women are making money, but at what cost? When a report by the Centre for Social Research found that 86 per cent of women agreed to be surrogates because of poverty, my heart broke.
One Australian couple spoke to the Sun Herald about how their surrogacy experience was ‘like going to a supermarket to pick up your baby’.
The couple asked the Surrogacy Centre India (SCI), run by Dr Shivani Sachdev-Gour, to facilitate a relationship with their surrogate or a link at the very least. They wanted to monitor her progress and send recordings of their voices for Saffron in utero. At every turn, however, they were blocked, the couple said. They were not allowed to know the woman’s name, and only after months of asking, were granted a single photograph of the surrogate, from neck down
Indian surrogates are paid $6000 for a successful pregnancy, plus living expenses for a year (about $3000). But what about the emotional toll for these women? Their mental health must be suffering as a result of carrying a baby that is not their own to full term. And not only are they giving up this baby but it is being transported to live overseas without any contact with its “mother” – and in some cases like the above where the couple want the surrogate to play an active role in their babies life, somehow.
The booming surrogacy demands in India can be illegal and costly for those who risk it. There is too much at risk here and somewhere the Australian or Indian Government must step in.
The NSW Government is under pressure to rethink the ban on commercial surrogacy overseas. Surrogacy activists will push the case for decriminalisation at a private lunch for NSW parliamentarians next week.
What do you think of commercial surrogacy? Are Indian women being exploited? Should it be banned?
