A mother's tale: how wombs are put on rent

Mumbai: The milk cooperative movement began in Anand and empowered women in rural Gujarat. In 2007, Anand is scripting a very different story through women like Pushpa.

Pushpa is a surrogate mother and her womb is for hire. She will bear somebody else’s child for a price. Pushpa found out about surrogacy while visiting a friend in Kaival Hospital in Anand and life has changed for her since then.

“I came home and told my husband. He first refused but then I told him that if we get the money will be able to have a house of our own,” says Pushpa.

Like Pushpa, Suman Ben too needs money for a better life. The Rs 50 her husband earns daily is not enough to support their family. Suman’s first surrogate pregnancy failed, but delivering a child could mean a better future and so she's trying again.

"I don't care for what people say; I think surrogacy is a very human thing to do," says Suman. "We called for a meeting and explained to everyone that his was not a wrong thing. People accepted this and now the same people who criticised me are opting for surrogacy."

Surrogate mothers make anything between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh per birth, the rates varying from city to city. Surrogacy in India is also simpler and cheaper than in the developed world. India has become the preferred destination for In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), a technique in which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the woman's womb, because it has the latest technology and it is cheap.

Cheap place to hire wombs

“Foreign couples come here because the cost of IVF in India is cheaper—it is 10 times less expensive. It could take three months to get an appointment with an IVF consultant abroad but here they can have an appointment within a week,” says Dr Sunita Tandulwadkar, a consultant at the Ruby Hall Clinic in Surat.

Ruby Hall is one of the many clinics in India where women who cannot give birth can opt for surrogacy. Even women who would like to have children without pregnancy can opt for surrogate mothers.

What about the surrogate mothers and the couple who have hired their wombs? Dr Naina Ben Patel, who runs the Kaival Hospital in Surat and is considered a godmother by surrogate mothers for the help she has given them, says the relationship between the couple and the surrogate is special.

"I would like to help them all throughout my life and the way we are trying to build up this support group for the surrogates and build up a fund for the surrogates," says Dr Patel.

She believes that commissioning parents should come forward to help the surrogate mother of their child. She believes the relationship between the couple and the surrogate is special.

Her grandchildren’s mother

Pushpa and Suman Ben are surrogate mothers because they need money. Vidya Ben, too, is a surrogate mother and has delivered twins, Neil and Nandini.

But Vidya is a special surrogate mother—she delivered the children for her daughter who lives in the UK. Her daughter’s marriage was in trouble because she couldn’t conceive and Vidya had to make the difficult choice to help her.

“My daughter could not deliver so I decided to help her. My family said you have to do it, as there's no other way that your daughter can have a child,” says Vidya.

Do Vidya and her husband, Kirit Bhai, think about the complexities of their relationship with their grandchildren? Does Vidya regard the twins as her children or as her grandchildren?

“When they visit us we treat them like our own children but we will always be grandparents to them,” says Kirit Bhai.

Vidya’s womb made her daughter a mother can and she is happy to have done that but she actually over stepped the guidelines of the Indian Council For Medical Research. The guidelines state that a surrogate mother should be of the same generation as the woman who needs a child.

It was a moment of immense pride when the twins arrived, but it has been three years and the family is still waiting to get acceptance from within their own community. “We cannot change the way society or the world thinks,” says Kirit Bhai.

Legally, Vidya is the mother of the twins. The municipality in Surat considers the mother to be a woman who has delivered the children. Vidya’s daughter had difficulty in getting passports for the twins.

"We applied to the Gujarat government first and then the appeal was sent to Delhi. We got a reply after two months. My daughter's name was added as the mother to the birth certificates of the children together with my wife's name," says Kirit Bhai.

The law is mum

Surrogacy isn’t illegal in India simply because there are no laws and this makes surrogate mothers vulnerable to exploitation.

"When anything is influenced by economics, by money, there is invariably a dark side. Money can have a powerful corrupting influence on people from all walks of life,” admits Dr Rajesh Parikh, a neuro psychiatrist in the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai. Parikh, who has 18 years experience, has counseled commissioning parents and also and surrogate mothers.

"If surrogacy becomes an avenue by which women, in relatively wealthy countries, select poorer women in our country to bear their babies, then it is economic exploitation, a kind of biological colonisation," says Parikh.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has guidelines for surrogacy and these say doctors and hospitals should not be involved in the monetary dealings between the couple and the surrogate. A surrogate mother should not be over 45 years of age and no woman may act as a surrogate more than thrice in her lifetime.

So can a woman who is 18 or even younger become a surrogate mother? What if she is already a mother to five children? Won’t it tell on her health?

Lawyer and social activist Nandita Rao considers the ICMR guidelines to be toothless. "The ICMR guidelines have been made to totally facilitate clinics and to facilitate genetic parents who want surrogate mothers. There is nothing to protect the interests of the surrogate mothers," she says.

Before the procedure begins, there is a contract between the surrogate and the commissioning parents. “When you have a contract between an illiterate woman who is absolutely needy for money, and a powerful couple advised by lawyers the contract is null and void. The surrogate mother is not giving her free consent, she is not informed of the consequences," says Rao.

According to agreements they sign at the start of IVF, surrogate mothers cannot retain the baby. "Once they deliver they have to hand over the baby. They do not have any responsibility towards the baby. It's the responsibility of the infertile couple to keep the baby," says Dr Patel, of the Kaival Hospital in Surat.

And what if the couple that hired a surrogate mother decides they don’t want a baby after delivery? “Nothing can compel them to take the child, so in that sense, the child's right is not protected," says Rao.

There is another crucial factor surrogacy does in fact, have a low success rate. "We tell them (surrogate mothers) that the first two deliveries might have been normal but in the third you can end up with a complication. There could be some complication of pregnancy and delivery, but still they want to go ahead with it. They want to earn something, or get something out of it," says Dr Patel.

For childless couples, surrogacy is yet another option, the laws are still in the embryonic stages surrogate mothers who come from the lowest social strata of the society are open to exploitation. Medical tourism is on the rise. Are baby boomers a part of the package?

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