In the last few hours, there’s been a recycled report in AP, discussing the implications of ‘outsourcing’ baby-bearing to surrogate mothers stationed at ready in India, and the lower costs of employing surrogate mothers to bear babies for infertile couples in countries like India, as opposed to the US or other developed countries where surrogacy is legally permitted.
More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that most natural of desires: to have a family.
Even surrogates catering to the US market have been discussing this issue, with mixed feelings about what ‘outsourcing’ brings to the situation. Some feel it is a positive for the families who get an affordable ‘solution’ at an affordable cost, while others shrug it off as ‘You get what you pay for’, implying that the lower costs imply possibly a less healthy offspring of some kind, given the kind of conditions that could exist in a less-developed nation.
Is this exploitation, or is it just a straightforward deal between eager genetic parents and gestational mothers? My sense is that if it occurs between consenting parties, with all details laid out and agreed to in a legal contract, it would very much be a non-issue, ethically. Both parties get what they expect out of the deal, no more and no less. The parents get a much longed for child, while the surrogate gets adequate compensation that she most likely uses to help her family climb the economic ladder.
Again, this is not really a ‘new’ story, having come out over a year ago in the Christian Science Monitor, with a fairly balanced coverage of the issues and a clear indicator of the fact that this appears to be a preferred mode of surrogacy for Indian diaspora, who are comfortable with the idea of Indian women being paid to act as surrogates.
Some 75 percent of the clients are non-resident Indians from the UK, the US, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Is there really such a growing interest among couples of other ethnicities in Indian surrogates that this could be categorized as ‘outsourcing’ wombs? Hard to say, since I couldn’t find much information on this practice. The closest I could locate was this 2005 article about an ethnic Chinese couple from Singapore using a Mumbai woman as a surrogate :
Outsourcing to India just took on a new dimension—a childless couple from Singapore has found an Indian woman to mother a surrogate baby. In a first-of-its-kind instance at Hiranandani Hospital, the ethnic Chinese couple’s child is growing in the womb of a Mumbai-based woman.
Again, this hardly seems like a new trend that has all childless couples rushing to get on the next plane to India to get a cut-rate genetic heir.
Perhaps this is just another of those "See what else is getting outsourced to India" article in the wake of negative Sinophobic headlines. Perhaps the media has gotten a bit tired of the All-Benazir-all-day-long telethon and are trying to waft the public to some other topic, which might explain this sudden recycling of the ‘Wombs-R-Us’ meme.
I wonder.
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “Wombs-R-Us: the Ultimate in Outsourcing? (Sujatha)”
I too saw this story recently in a major publication (the link to the AP story is not working). But it was prior to Bhutto’s death.
I wasn’t aware that most of the clients for surrogate pregnancies in India are non-resident Indians abroad. If a fertilized egg belonging to someone else is implanted in a woman’s uterus, the genetic/ racial make up of the fetus is not affected by that of the surrogate mother. So why are childless Indian couples traveling to India to have their genetic heirs and are more “comfortable” with renting wombs of other Indian women? Not for racial integrity reasons for sure. It then has to do with lower costs and reduced chances of possible future litigation by the surrogate mothers. The same reasons why corporations open up shops and factories in developing countries. So it is an outsourcing of sorts. Although ethicists may have qualms if the practice becomes too widespread, it is not likely to cause any uproar in the labor sector. I doubt that Pat Buchanan, Denis Kucinich and other NAFTA / free trade opponents are going to get riled up over renting low cost wombs abroad while local wombs lie fallow.
Absent any chances of communicable disease, it hardly matters WHO gives birth to a child. It is HOW a child is cared for that matters. But I have never understood and this is just my own POV, why childless couples who have difficulty with conception go to such extraordinary lengths to have “genetic” heirs when there are so many babies available for adoption in the world.
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Wombs-R-Us: the Ultimate in Outsourcing? (Sujatha)
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I’m not sure that the ‘racial’ element is totally lacking when NRIs (non-resident Indians) choose to use Indian surrogacy services-if it were the case that, say China (currently, not legal there) or S.Korea offered such services, would we see large numbers of childless Indian couples headed for those countries? I doubt it.
Some Chinese hospitals offer surrogacy services, operating illicitly, but their primary clients are Chinese childless and the numbers are small, just like in this much hyped Indian story.
Even the Singapore-Chinese couple reveal their story only anonymously, being afraid of socio-cultural repercussions if they went public. For the NRIs, part of the attraction of this kind of surrogate selection is the comfort level with the local culture and assurances from the doctors in charge that the whole process is being properly monitored and controlled, that makes them think this is worthwhile, compared with the costs/legal issues that still make surrogacy in the US less attractive to them. The same biases might apply for those in other countries who are determined to have ‘genetic heirs’, so they would presumably prefer to stick with surrogates in their countries.
This is a niche market, given the plethora of other less arduous alternatives (adoption being the prime one) available- aimed at a group of people desperate for their own-flesh-and-blood children, the kind who believe that genetics trumps environment and have a deep seated distrust of solutions such as adoption. It’s not a pleasing viewpoint, but valid as a business model, I suppose.
By the way, I’ve fixed the missing link.
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