India is well-known as an outsourcing hub, we provide customer services, tech support, IT services, and we provide surrogate mothers too.
The basic reason for growing outsourcing services is India provides satisfyingly efficient workers at much lower cost. India not only provides a number of successful IVF clinics with excellent technology and services, there are many women willing to provide surrogate services. According to some estimates, Indian surrogacy market is already a whooping $445 million a year. No wonder India is already gaining fame as the cradle of the world, poised to become the surrogacy outsourcing capital.
Not only foreigners visit India for gaining cheaper medical services, foreign couples suffering from infertility are gaining interest in India because of the same reason. Surrogacy costs about $12,000 in India, including surrogate mother’s fees and all medical expenses. In the U.S., the same procedure can cost up to $70,000.
A surrogate mother can gain some $6000 for her services. Now $6000 is not a small amount, it is equivalent to almost Rs30, 000.
Some people may argue that foreigners are exploiting poor Indian women using them as surrogates, but same argument one can put forth for every outsourcing job Indians provide. India provides fairly advanced medical system and services and English speaking doctors, but above that, Indian surrogate market is yet not suffering with the legal-red-taping, ill-defined surrogacy laws and governmental interference, making things easy and economically viable.
Surrogacy is not a new concept for Indians. Since long, infertile couples used to have services of other woman in form of mistress or second-wife, to have a baby.
It certainly does not mean that there are not problems with surrogacy in India.
The major problem is finding a surrogate mother; it is certainly not easy irrespective of the fact that there are many willing women to serve as surrogate mothers on commercial basis. Yet, it is always better to involve a good lawyer, reliable clinic and health care system. In case of relative or friend providing surrogate services, reliability may be much more, yet if she turns out to deny giving up the child later on, things may go sour.
Although many Indian women willingly agrees for providing surrogate services, yet they prefer to keep it secret as the traditional society often considers it as an immoral act, as if the such surrogate mother is result of some immoral sexual relation. People just cannot grasp that a woman can be pregnant without actually involving herself in any sexual act, there can be virgin mothers too. One of Indian surrogate mother discusses her experience here.¹
In case of commercial surrogate, it is necessary to involve a good lawyer to maintain the honesty in the deal. If surrogate mother is anonymous, then clinic is responsible for the proceedings.
Yet the real problems occur after the birth of the child. The surrogate mother may change her mind.
Let us assume that a woman agreed to provide surrogate services for an amount of $7000, she gained that amount, she is entitled for best clinical facilities and health care possible during the pregnancy and you will be paying for that to the clinic involved. That is, you have invested a whole lot of money in all this. After the pregnancy period, the birth of the child is successful and the newly born child is healthy. Now the question arises, who will sign as mother and father of the child on birth certificate? How will they sell their parental rights to the infertile couple for which the woman served as surrogate mother? What if she changes her mind and denies giving up the child? What if she blackmails the infertile couple and demands more money?
As there is no importance of mutual contracts as such in India, and any such contract regarding selling of parental rights need to be testified with recognized adoption agencies, it forces the infertile couples to engage in the convoluted system.
Basically, it is not at all necessary.
In a free market, the contract holds value and it certainly does not require any authority to testify a contract between two people.
If a woman agrees to provide surrogate services, she signs of the contract to provide those services at a particular prize. Once the deal is contracted, and woman agrees to it, she holds no right to deny it later on after the birth of the child. Even if she feels strong surge to not to hand over the child, she will need to pay back the money which was invested on her plus a monetary fine as punishment.
In case of anonymous surrogate mothers, it becomes the duty of the clinic to make sure that birth certificate holds the name of infertile couple as mother and father, and the clinic is responsible to check the procedures of adoption. Obviously, the convoluted process of adoption in India should be eased and adoption should be allowed freely. A well drafted document of agreed contract between surrogate mother and infertile couple should be enough to maintain the sanctity of process. Any sort of red-carpeting and government involvement ruins the efficiency and burdens wastage of resources and money.
The clinics should hold the power to issue birth certificates, so that the clinic may avoid any chance of blackmail or breach of contract after the birth of the child and the role of registered adoption agencies should be reduced, such regulatory agencies just increases the burden of non-productive-activities.
Why the adoption process should be free?
If the adoption process is not free and it involves a registered agency to facilitate adoption, the system provides enough space for corruption. The surrogate mother or her husband in such cases may easily breach the original contract and wilfully dispute the contract. In such cases, the infertile couple is likely to find themselves enmeshed in a legal predicament; and with the inefficient Indian court system, it is quite likely that the child will be of 12 years before the issue of parenthood may reach a solution.
Obviously, such situation is not only harmful for the infertile couple that invested on the surrogate mother, but it is also harmful for the surrogate mother too, as she will also be emotionally stretched, but more than that, the newly borne will suffer the most.
Other issue regarding surrogacy is its misuse or overuse.
A women suffering from recurrent miscarriages often start feeling that her uterus is weak and she is not able to be a mother. The clinics also suggest surrogacy as the first solution as it is commercially profitable for the clinics. Yet such women may be treated in much cheaper and easier ways. Some aged women willing to be mother often thinks that their aged uterus is not able to carry the embryo, but the fact is most of such miscarriages are not because of weakness of uterus, but because of genetic weakness of aged eggs. Thus, if the eggs are weak, even changing the uterus will not solve the problem, those eggs will not be able to fertilize properly providing healthy embryo in strong uterus of surrogate mothers too and she will also suffer miscarriage, creating confusion and wastage of money and resources. Better option in such cases is donation of strong eggs to the infertile woman. That is, instead of renting a womb, such infertile woman may buy healthy eggs and carry a healthy child in their own womb.
Now egg donation and womb donation both require surrogate mothers. In egg donation, the surrogate mother provides her eggs and becomes the genetic mother of the newly borne child thus produced, which takes birth from the womb of infertile mother. On the other hand, in case of womb donation, the infertile mother remains the genetic mother of the child, yet the child takes birth from surrogate womb.
Egg donation treatment is obviously cheaper and it involves lesser regulatory issues because Indian authority does not consider DNA proofs for deciding parenthood.
Woman suffering from recurrent miscarriages, unable to get pregnant but still ovulating, feels sudden surge to get a solution, and in that surge they need proper direction whether to choose for surrogate womb services or egg donation services.
I would suggest any woman looking for such solution should try to gather maximum information she can to avoid any future disputes. Obviously, a free market regarding surrogacy and child adoption will be much beneficial, yet in absence of that, only solution is to gather more and more information to avoid frauds and accidents.
Infertility is such a common problem that in near future, the market of surrogacy will evolve much more.
There can be chances that some women may adopt of surrogacy just to avoid delivery pains. Although I just do not approve such ideas, yet if some woman opts for having surrogate services to avoid delivery pains, I do not consider it any wrong. Such women cannot force anyone to provide her surrogate services and if some women willingly agree to provide surrogacy in such cases, then it is their proper right.

1. Surrogate Mothers:Renting the Womb, world reports [↩]