So here's how it works. Young and spirited young women from desolate nondescript villages in India play surrogate mothers to childless couples from as far away as Japan, Finland, Germany, the U.S and Canada. This gives them an opportunity, a dream opportunity to escape the lower-middle class ghetto in what remains the most rigid class-bound boundaries in the world. Its a win-win situation for both parties. To the surrogates this is a spectacularly lucrative and otherwise unthinkable career option. They now buy pucca houses, send their children to school and nurture other dreams. To them this is 'good, pious work'. For the couples desiring a child, their surrogate friends are a god-send. From paying anywhere between $20,000 and $50,000 in their home countries, the Indian mothers are paid only $5000 to $10,000. A small price for a lifetime of joy.
Apparently these medical practitioners have helped launch a national boom estimated at $200 million! But I have some points of my own to make on this.
- Is it moral to pay the world's poor to have our children? Well, it is as long as the arrangement is carried out by the parties in full knowledge and safeguards for both are in place.
- There must be contracts that ensure seeking parents get their child, while the surrogates have children of their own as a psychological insurance.
- Surrogate mothers should be tested for a healthy reproductive cycle so that they can carry their pregnancy to term. Fertility tests, HIV tests, whatever it takes.
- Another caveat for anyone shopping in this bargain-friendly market is to give due consideration to the laws prevailing in the home countries of intended parents.
- Binding guidelines - couples should have some recourse should things go wrong. Same goes for the surrogates. They lose their money if they don't carry to term?
- With all the good that this business might be doing, we need to watch out for hucksters who exploit young mothers.
- Few clinics do the 'search for the womb' on their own and restrict themselves to only the embryo transfer and delivery. Recruiting the right surrogate is as important a decision as transferring the embryo into 'any' healthy womb.
It probably will take a while for this booming industry to show its face out in the public instead of staying down-under. But let us just understand, in a culture where parenthood is both a birthright and a social duty, there is a moral imperative in this operation, much beyond the economic implications - that is to help those who can't to attain it.
Music currently listening to - Buena Vista Social Club http://www.pbs.org/buenavista/
Current frame - Introspective
