4/30/2019 Surrogate mothers at risk in India after the commercial surrogacy ban is extended — Quartz India

SURROGACY DEBATE

How India’s surrogacy ban is fuelling the baby trade in

other countries
By Sharmila Rudrappa • October 24, 2017
Professor of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

REUTERS/ MANSI THAPLIYAL

Governments might want to reconsider bans on commercial surrogacy.

Would you pay someone $150,000 to have your baby?

The high cost of surrogacy in the US has pushed many potential parents to seek cheaper
options elsewhere. Countries like India and Thailand have attracted surrogacy clients from
countries like the US, Britain, Australia, and Israel. The global surrogacy trade, however, has
been fraught with scandals.

In India, where I’ve studied surrogacy since 2008, the government is rethinking regulations.
Gay couples were banned from using commercial surrogacy in 2012. In March 2017, the
Indian government extended the commercial ban to everyone. Now, only so-called “altruistic

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surrogacy” is allowed—when a consenting female family member bears a child for a childless
heterosexual Indian couple without pay.

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But what impact are bans on commercial surrogacy having for women who work in the
reproductive industry?

Downsides of commercial surrogacy

Some bioethicists and feminists have welcomed bans on commercial surrogacy. They argue
that it’s unethical to build businesses on women’s reproductive capacities.

Surrogacy businesses in India almost exclusively focused on the needs of the client.

The Surrogacy Debate in India

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Destinations such as India became popular precisely because they offered surrogacy at
bargain basement prices by paying surrogate mothers less. They offered preterm childbirth
through cesarean surgeries in order to accommodate clients’ availability to take time off
from work. They created barriers between surrogate mothers and clients to minimize the
emotional costs for clients. This allowed clients to leave India with their babies—no strings
attached.

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Many bioethicists believe that selling pregnancy as a service is untenable because it puts a
price on human body parts and life. Commercial surrogacy, they note, results in the
devaluation of women and children and the eventual degradation of society. Thus, removing
cash payment for surrogacy and instead endorsing it as an altruistic, gift-like exchange
between transactors is seen as more ethical.

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These arguments carry weight. Countries like Canada and Australia allow only altruistic
surrogacy.

Downsides of bans
Like other countries that provide commercial surrogacy, there were no legal requirements in
India to provide statistics on how many clinics provided surrogacy services, the number of
clients or women employed. What we do know is that the ban has slowed a brisk global trade
in Indian working-class women’s reproductive capacities that is estimated to have garnered
anywhere from $400 million to $1 billion per year. The baby trade, however, does not stop
with bans on commercial surrogacy. Instead, infertility clinics jump through legal loopholes
by moving surrogate mothers across borders. These movements expose surrogate mothers to
great risks.

For example, when India rst banned surrogacy for gay couples in 2012, various infertility
businesses in Delhi continued to sign on gay clients from all over the world. Clients shipped
their frozen sperm to Delhi, which was used to fertilize eggs from Indian donors. The
resulting embryos, legally belonging to the gay men, were implanted into Indian surrogate
mothers. To avoid the ban, infertility clinics then moved surrogate mothers across
international borders into Nepal. There, they gave birth and clients arrived to pick up their
children.

This emerging trade route between Delhi and Kathmandu halted when an earthquake hit
Nepal on April 25, 2015, killing 8,000 people and injuring more than 21,000. While various
governments airlifted babies belonging to their citizens, the fate of the Indian mothers and
how they got back home remains unclear.

I learned more about this type of workaround in conversations with a Mumbai-based

infertility specialist in September 2015. The specialist, who will remain anonymous to
protect con dentiality, revealed that he was recruiting surrogate mothers from Kenya to
come to Mumbai. Through in vitro fertilisation, he implanted the Kenyan women with
embryos belonging to gay men. The women were then own back to Nairobi after
completing 24 weeks of pregnancy in India. They birthed babies in designated hospitals in
Nairobi, from where gay father clients picked up the babies. The Mumbai doctor maintained
that he had not broken the law, because technically, he had not interacted with gay clients
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within Indian territory, and all he had provided was in vitro fertilisation for Kenyan
“healthcare” seekers.

News reports have documented a similar effect in Cambodia, where the government began
to crack down on surrogacy earlier this year. Now, surrogate mothers from Phnom Penh are
being sent to Bangkok, Thailand, to deliver babies. Thai laws ban commercial surrogacy
transactions, but enforcement agencies are unable to distinguish surrogate mothers in
hospitals from other pregnant women. Cambodian surrogate mothers are also being sent to
Laos, where there are no surrogacy laws, to deliver babies in clinics staffed by Thai doctors
who once worked in Thailand when commercial surrogacy was still legal there.

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Under these circumstances, women are far more vulnerable than before. They are wholly
dependent on agencies that have brought them into countries where they are strangers and
unfamiliar with the language, culture, and social norms. Surrogacy agencies provide them
with housing and food in these foreign countries. And they control the money. As a result,
the women are powerless to terminate their contracts, or go back home if they choose to do
so. They are isolated from friends and family and have no legal recourse to address nancial
abuses or medical malpractice.

Human rights of surrogate mothers

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Country-speci c bans do nothing to alleviate the vulnerability of working-class women

across poor countries. Instead, these bans create situations where women may be exposed to
far deeper mistreatment and exploitation. Governments might want to reconsider bans on
commercial surrogacy.

One option is to negotiate multilateral agreements between countries to govern global

surrogacy. Such international law would need to balance the rights of persons pursuing
parenthood, children’s rights, and surrogate mothers’ rights. But because of differences in
countries’ norms on gay rights and surrogacy, international agreements are dif cult to forge.

A more pragmatic solution for countries like India and Thailand would be to legalize
commercial surrogacy but regulate it heavily. Rather than bans, governments should
consider laws that uphold surrogate mothers’ sense of dignity and bodily integrity. Surrogate
mothers should be treated as full human beings who have the right to choose how they get
pregnant, the right to opt out of medical interventions, the right to refuse cesarean
surgeries, and the right to maintain contact with the babies they birthed. Commercial
surrogacy is tenable only if surrogate mothers’ emotional, physical, and intellectual well-
being is respected.

This article and video were produced in collaboration with News Deeply’s Women & Girls. This
article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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