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 Successful pregnancies have never been more important at this
surrogacy center where every bed is taken following a jump in demand
as India inches towards banning commercial surrogacy.
These women could be among the last in the country to rent their
wombs for money if the Indian parliament passes a bill to outlaw
commercial surrogacy - a 15-year-old industry estimated to be worth
as much as $2.3 billion annually - in its next session starting in
February.
India's surrogacy industry has come under attack by women's rights
groups who say fertility clinics are "baby factories" for the rich,
and that a lack of regulation results in poor and uneducated women
signing contracts they do not fully understand.
Yet some of the women the bill aims to protect are currently queuing
up for a last chance to make around 400,000 rupees ($5,900) - money
they said they could only dream of otherwise.
Razia Sultana, 32, had an embryo transferred into her uterus in the
final week of December.
Until six months ago, she arranged egg donors and surrogates for
infertility clinics, making 5,000 rupees for each referral, but
decided to become a surrogate herself on the day she first heard
about the ban.
"My children supported my decision saying bearing a child was better
than selling a kidney, which I was considering too," she told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation.
She will stay at the center for nine months, meet her children once
a week and only go outside with an escort.
"These are small compromises. I have no other option to make this
kind of money."
SLAVERY TO SURROGACY
The Indian government believes the ban will check unethical
practices.
"We are concerned about the health of the surrogate mother and that
the legal and financial rights of the child are protected," said
Manoj Pant from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
"India wants to be on par with developed and developing nations that
do not legitimize commercial surrogacy."
Until the ban on surrogacy passes, India continues to be among a
handful of countries where women can be paid to carry another's
child through in-vitro fertilization and embryo transfer.
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Most women at the Gurugram center are from migrant colonies close to
the sweatshops where they once worked.
Ruby Kumari, 35, heard about surrogacy three years ago at the export
factory where she worked 12-hour shifts, stitching 50 garments an
hour - a target her manager would stretch to 60 or even 70 - and
earning 250 rupees a day.
The possibility of earning 400,000 rupees hooked her and she agreed
to rent her womb.
"The day I delivered, the child's parents gifted me 50,000 rupees in
addition to my fee," Kumari said. "I came back and enrolled my
daughter into an English-medium school."
Kumari's husband also works in a garment factory and makes 2 rupees
for each item he irons. Pregnant with her second surrogate child,
Kumari said her family had no future if not for surrogacy.
Like Kumari, Jayalakshmi Verma is another surrogate who wonders why
"gifting motherhood" is wrong and why work that earns her respect
and money would be made illegal.
The 28-year-old single mother of three said: "My in-laws threw me
out of their house, my manager at the export factory was abusive and
I was forced to quit. Here I have got respect for carrying a child."
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Verma said she will have no choice but to return to the factory if
surrogacy is banned. "What other skill do I have?"
Surrogacy law experts say that if the government wishes to protect
poor women from being exploited, it should regulate the sector
rather than banning it.
"The surrogacy bill does not make any provision for the protection
of women, assuming that banning commercial surrogacy will protect
them," said Hari Ramasubramanian of Indian Surrogacy Law Centre.
UNREGULATED BUSINESS
At the Gurugram center, owner Sarita Sharma read out the
requirements for an egg donor to a staff member: "Fair complexion, B
positive."
Within seconds, a picture of a fair young woman smiling into the
camera flashes up on her phone and she quickly alerts the clinic.
Women receive 35,000 rupees for each donation.
"Business is brisk," said Sharma, who has been arranging donors and
surrogates for the last decade using a wide network of agents in
migrant colonies.
She said demand for her 1 million rupee pregnancy packages -
covering the surrogate's fee, food, accommodation and hospital
expenses - has shot up. "I have about 1,000 women registered with
us," Sharma said.
Yet as demand soars, so do concerns.
As part of a study on infertility clinics in New Delhi, sociologist
Tulsi Patel from the Delhi School of Economics found poor awareness
among women about the health complications and risks that repeated
egg donations and pregnancies can cause.
The study also found that in some cases, clinics would transfer more
than the permissible number of three embryos into the uterus to
better the chances of pregnancy.
"But we did not find a single case of a woman forced into
surrogacy," Patel said.
Experts fear the ban may push the industry underground, making women
offering surrogacy services only more vulnerable to health risks.
For now, the last surrogates still hope to realize their dreams. "I
want to start my own beauty parlor," said Jyoti Pal, 24, a single
mother who is now four months pregnant.
"And I will do it again if possible."
($1=68.01 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Roli Srivastava; Editing by Ed Upright. Please credit
Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters,
that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property
rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)
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