Saturday, February 23, 2008

Outsourcing Wombs

Want to rent a womb, come to India



Increasingly NRI are flocking to India to find a womb on hire in India.

Many couples in India see it as an opportunity to cash on and have some nice kitty in bank.

I don’t know how to respond to the trend. Indian women who are ready give womb on rent get about $ 15000 to $ 25000 and seem to be happy about it.

Some couples are so much sold on the idea that they have moved out from joint family and taken up the venture.

There are stories that parents do not know about it, it’s a secret shared between husband and wife alone. Then the time to deliver the baby comes they will move to other city. After delivery of child its handed over and couple goes back and announce delivery of a dead child or some thing of that sort.



There are few families where whole fertile women folks have taken to hiring wombs.





Foreigners are lining up to rent a womb in India. But they will soon have to face legal regulations being planned by the ministry of women and child development (WCD).

Surrogacy, an area unregulated till now, meant that childless couples from abroad as well as in the country could get away with renting a womb at terms often to the disadvantage of a needy women who stood the chance of being exploited.

Women and child development minister Renuka Chaudhary said that the ministry was considering a law to regulate the business of surrogate motherhood and sperm banks on the lines of similar laws in other countries.

Women's organizations have long been demanding a law on surrogate motherhood and hiring of wombs in India.

"The sensitive issue of surrogacy in the absence of laws or regulations has become a free playing field for unscrupulous intermediaries who lure and push uneducated and poor women into surrogate motherhood," a WCD ministry official said, emphasizing the need for the law.

It is argued that there was every possibility of misuse of children born out of surrogacy for terrorism, prostitution or unethical genetic engineering research as the foreigners who pay for the child would not have any emotional bonding with the kid.

India is emerging as a major destination for surrogacy as childless couples from US and Europe are lured by the prospect of a surrogate child for around Rs 100,000 ($2,250) to Rs 225,000 ($5,060) each pregnancy compared with some $40,000 or even more in the US. Many say the country can become a centre of "reproductive tourism".





Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman agrees to carry a pregnancy, which is genetically unrelated to her, to its full term. She delivers the child and hands it over to the genetic parents. Since couples fear that strangers who act as surrogates could pose legal problems, they often rope in relatives or friends to carry the pregnancy.
In one case, when a couple needed a surrogate for their child, it was the man's mother who carried the pregnancy. Strange and inconceivable but true as such things do happen in various parts of India.

There are some unbelievable incidents too, a woman in labor was brought to a hospital for the delivery.

But a couple who accompanied her informed the hospital that the pregnant woman was only a surrogate for their child, so her name should not appear on official records.

The ICMR clearly states that a woman, carrying a child biologically unrelated to her, must register as a patient in her own name and mention that she is a surrogate mother.



http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2503791,prtpage-1.cms

2 comments:

TunnelVision said...

Ruth,

Thanks for your visit.
Warm regards,

Unknown said...

Very disturbing fact. it is also said that this act is prevelant in the thakur commnity in the northern part of India, where to get an heir to their family, wombs are hired. poverty pushes people to give in to such horrendous practices