WUNRN
INDIA - SURROGATE MOTHERHOOD BOOM -
ETHICAL OR COMMERCIAL - STUDY
July
18, 2013 Centre for Social Research
Direct Link to Full 168-Page Study:
The
unregulated reproductive tourism industry of ‘procreating’ through surrogacy is
burgeoning in India while there is still no legal provision to safeguard the
interests of the surrogate mother, the child or the commissioning parents
according to a report released here today.
The
Study -Surrogacy Motherhood: Ethical or Commercial? conducted by Centre for
Social Research and supported by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in
the years 2011-12, further revealed that though the Assisted Reproductive
Technology (ART) Regulation Bill, 2010 did bring forth certain important points
for the legal framework to be based on, it has left out many crucial issues
relating to surrogacy arrangements.
According to the study, in Delhi & Mumbai, the respondents said that poverty and education of their children was the reason to opt for becoming a surrogate mother. 73.77% of surrogate mothers in Delhi and Mumbai said that the primary source of information for the surrogate mothers was the agents who had approached them for surrogacy.
Surrogate motherhood raises difficult ethical, social and economic issues, which remain unanswered. All these need to be analysed thoroughly before designing any policy relating to surrogacy and making legal provisions. The lack of research on surrogacy poses a problem for Government agencies to initiate legal provisions and take substantive action against those found guilty. Keeping this in mind the Centre for Social Research (CSR) conducted a pilot study on the issue of surrogacy in the areas of Anand, Surat and Jamnagar in Gujarat in the year 2010. After noticing a shifting trend in surrogacy from smaller cities to big metros such as Delhi and Mumbai, which are more easily accessible and provide better health care facilities and anonymity, CSR’s second study focused on these two metros of India which are slowly and steadily rising as surrogacy centers of the world.
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INDIA - STUDY INDICATES SURROGATE
MOTHERS MAY BE UNDERPAID, & NOT PROPERLY CARED FOR
New
Delhi, July 17, 2013
While
India emerges as a hub for surrogacy, a study released Wednesday says most
surrogate mothers are not properly paid or cared for.
The Centre for Social Research says the surrogate mothers are paid only one to
two percent of what the commissioning parents pay for a baby.
"The commissioning parents pay anything between Rs.40-45 lakh for a
surrogate baby, but these women get barely Rs.2-3 lakh," Ranjana Kumari,
director of CSR, said.
According to the study, 46 percent of respondents in Delhi and 44 percent in
Mumbai said they received Rs.3-4 lakh for surrogacy while 42 percent in Mumbai
and 22 percent in Delhi got Rs.2-4 lakh.
Only 26 percent in Delhi said they earned above Rs.4 lakh.
Manasi Mishra, head of the research team which brought out the report, said the
women were kept either in hostels or in isolated flats or hotel rooms, out of
bounds from their own families.
In many cases, their nutritional or health needs were not taken care of.
"We have seen cases where they have billed the commissioning parents for
articles like health drinks but the woman had never even seen a health
drink," said Mishra.
"If the woman has a miscarriage or has some health issues after the
delivery, she is not taken care of," Mishra added.
The researchers also highlighted that touts or middlemen had a big role in the
whole business. Nearly 74 percent of surrogate mothers in Delhi and Mumbai said
these agents were their primary source of information.
"According to (estimates), surrogacy is an industry worth $2.3
billion," Ranjana Kumari said. The activists say there is no law on
surrogacy.
"Despite the fact that India is becoming a hub for surrogacy, we don't
even know if it is legal or illegal because there is no law," Ranjani
Kumari said.
"We are not against surrogacy, but the unregulated commercial nature it
has acquired is a serious issue," she said.
The study adds that nearly 40 percent of the parents who opt for surrogacy are
NRIs or foreigners while 60 percent are Indians.
__________________________________________________________
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Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Subject: India - Surrogate Motherhood Boom - Legal Concerns
WUNRN
INDIA - SURROGATE MOTHERHOOD BOOM -
LEGAL CONCERNS
_____________________________________________________________________
Women like these at a clinic in Anand, India, can earn much more as surrogate mothers than at normal jobs. - NY Times - Stephanie Sinclair/VII Network
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INDIA - SURROGACY BOOM AWAITS LEGAL
REGULATION
Surrogacy
became legal in India in 2002 and since then infertility centers have
multiplied to match the number of couples with surrogates, who say the income
is crucial. But critics say payment isn't high enough and the industry needs
ethical oversight.
NEW DELHI
(WOMENSENEWS)--Chandini, 27, holds the hand of her 6-year-old daughter as she
enters an in vitro fertilization center for a checkup.
"I had
to change two buses to make it to here," she says in a hushed voice,
smiling as she wipes the sweat off her forehead with her cotton sari.
Chandini says
she became a surrogate mother to earn money for her family.
"I
want a better life for my daughters," she says.
Her
husband's earnings as a daily wage carpenter – around $80 a month – isn't
enough to support their two daughters, so Chandini works as a housemaid and has
become a surrogate. She's been promised almost $4,500 for carrying and
delivering this fetus for a Canadian couple, who couldn't bear their own child.
"This
money means a lot to me," she says.
Hundreds of
Indian women rent their wombs to earn money for their families. And the number
is growing here, where commercial surrogacy is legal and there are so far no
laws or governmental oversight.
Since India
legalized commercial surrogacy in 2002, in vitro fertilization centers have
multiplied, attracting aspiring parents from around the globe, says Sanjay
Agarwal, chairman of SATYA, an advocacy organization for surrogate children's
rights.
The low cost
of infertility treatment in India – nearly one-quarter of the cost in developed
nations – and the modern assisted reproductive techniques available here make
India a top choice for infertility treatments, according to the Indian
government's medical tourism Web site. The Confederation of Indian Industry
predicts that commercial surrogacy will be a $2.3 billion industry by 2012.
Gujarat
- Unofficial Surrogacy World Capital
Gujarat, a
state in western India, has become the unofficial surrogacy capital of the
world.
Dr. Nayna
Patel, who became the face of the Indian surrogacy industry when Oprah Winfrey
profiled her and her Gujarat clinic, Akanksha Infertility Clinic, in 2007, says
the money earned from being a surrogate mother transforms lives.
In India, 42
percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a
day, according to UNICEF.
"It's
only for our financial difficulties [that] my husband let[s] me do it,"
Chandini says.
Sighing,
Chandini adds that "daughters mean burden" in India, referring to the
steep dowry that many families must pay their daughters' husbands when they get
married.
But Manasi
Mishra, head of a surrogacy study at the New Delhi-based Centre for Social
Research, says that surrogate mothers' lives aren't improved that much
financially.
Surrogacy
also raises legal concerns, says the center's director, Ranjana Kumari, as
there aren't legal provisions to protect the surrogate mother, child or
parents-to-be.
The majority
of surrogate mothers dislike the way clinics treat them, according to the
center's surrogacy study. Women are often coerced into repeated inseminations
if the first one fails, not allowed to meet the receiving families and paid
only after relinquishing the baby to the clinic.
Kumari says
commercial surrogacy also has social ramifications. Although Western cultures
accept it, traditional Indian values condemn it.
"A
surrogate mother can face many levels of violence, including social
ostracizing," Kumari says.
But Patel
disagrees.
"All
the reputed IVF clinics have been following many guidelines," she says. "Who
says that surrogate mothers are exploited?"
A Dangerous Process
SATYA's
Agarwal says health care conditions here also make it a dangerous process for
women, who tend to have children of their own to care for.
"Is it
ethical for a country like India, which has one of the worst maternal mortality
rates in the world, where a woman dies during childbirth every seven minutes,
to promote and allow commercial surrogacy?" Agarwal asks.
The Indian
Council of Medical Research has drafted a bill to govern surrogacy.
"The
bill will take some time to become a law," says Dr. R.S. Sharma, a member
of the drafting committee.
Chandini
says she doesn't tell people -- not even her children -- that she's a surrogate
mother.
"Akanksha
has specialized counseling programs for the to-be surrogate mother," Patel
says, to help with the social stigma and potential pain of giving up one's
baby. "They are made to meet the commissioning parents, too. And of course
they are taken good care of."
Chandini
says it isn't easy, but that she has few other options.
"It
takes a heart to give away a baby you feel growing in your womb for nine
months," Chandini says. "It's what being poor makes you do."
Adapted
from original content published by the Global Press Institute. Read the
original article here. All shared content has been copyrighted by Global Press
Institute.