Fashion designer Tom Ford became the
latest celebrity to use a surrogate mother to make a baby on Friday when
it was announced that he and his partner of 24 years, editor Richard Buckley, had become fathers of a boy named Alexander.
They joined a list that includes Giuliana Rancic, Elton John, Camille Grammer, Ricky Martin, Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Kidman. But there are tens of thousands of parents who are not rich or famous using surrogates.
A professional Washington D.C.-based facilitator, Crystal Travis, tells Flash that the baby-making technique has become more affordable in recent years, thanks to outsourcing.
“It’s a $2.3 billion industry in India,” said Travis. “It’s much more
expensive in the U.S., more than $100,000. In India, it’s about
$35,000.” Travis, who experienced the anguish on infertility herself,
started her World of Surrogacy consulting business in 2007, after she
and her husband had three kids in India using the same surrogate mother.
Gay men are big customers because it’s largely unregulated, as
opposed to adoption, which involves reams of red tape. “It’s much easier
than adopting and works out to be about the same cost,” Travis said.
After reading this article, I realized that the reporter has never had a child born via a surrogate in India. The article was clearly biased as well as the photo's of the surrogates sitting on the floor watching TV. I'm sure the day that the photo's were taken, it was over 115 degrees in Anand, and all you wish to do is sit on the floor. The surrogates in Gujarat, come from poor villages all over Ahmadabad, and they often line up throughout the week and do whatever they have to so that they can be egg donor's or surrogates. This does not just happen with Dr. Patel's clinic in Anand, but other clinics in the state of Gujarat as well. Reporter's need to understand that generally women in India who become surrogates are desperate for money, either to take care of their children, or to build a home or sadly to pay off their husbands gambling debts.
The surrogates do look at carrying intended parents as a business arrangement, why should they look at it any other way? Whatever spin people wish to place on this subject, it is what is is. Intended parents pay money for a woman to carry their child, and the surrogate is paid for her services. Sadly, many doctors in India do not pay them a reasonable rate, but there are doctor's in India who do the right thing. No one is doing this for altruistic reasons, lets be clear.
Here is the Article---------------------------------------
"Renting our wombs is just a job": Inside the baby factories where poor
Indian women are paid £5k to be 'vessels' for rich Westerners
As many as 2,000 surrogacy births for women overseas were recorded in India’s 1,000 so-called baby factories last year
Rent-a-womb: Surrogate mothers live in dorms to earn lump sums of cash
Shariq Allaqaband / Cover Asia Press
Pregnant women in India are living in grim dormitories away from
their families to have babies for wealthy couples, a Sunday Mirror
investigation reveals.
As many as 2,000 surrogacy births for women overseas were recorded in India’s 1,000 so-called baby factories last year.
News
of the shocking scale of the industry comes as a British couple have
admitted they are paying £20,000 for an Indian surrogate to have a
child.
Dominic and Octavia Orchard provoked fury by insisting they
weren’t interested in the background of the poor woman carrying their
baby, saying she was “just a vessel”.
Oxfordshire housewife
Octavia, who has a three-year-old son Orlando, said: “Her womb is just
the receptacle in which it is being carried. Perhaps it sounds cold and
rather clinical, but this is a business transaction.
“Her function
is to sustain the foetus we have created. I’m not interested in her
background. I don’t want to be part of her life.” Cold: The women watch TV on a tiled floor
Shariq Allaqaband / Cover Asia Press
The Akanksha Infertility Clinic in Anand, Gujarat can host 60 surrogates at a time.
The
mothers and staff do all they can to make sure the babies are strong
and healthy, ready to be taken away at birth and delivered to the
foreign parents.
Couples from countries including the UK, US,
Australia and Canada take advantage of India’s surrogacy industry, which
gives strong legal guarantees to the paying parents-to-be.
Some couples need an egg donor, others just need a womb.
With
fees between £14,000 and £20,000, it is certain the couples enjoy a
lifestyle a million miles from the women who make their dreams come
true.
The surrogates receive £3,000 to £5,000, giving them a chance to buy a house and send their existing children to a good school. Industry: Akanksha Fertility Clinic
Shariq Allaqaband / Cover Asia Press
Many Indian women become surrogates up to three times – the
limit under Indian law, leaving their families for up to nine months at a
time.
But no matter how desperate and emotionally painful being
surrogate might be, the women involved see it as a job. Parvati Lal
Bahadur Yep, 30, is eight months pregnant with twins. It’s her first
time as a surrogate.
“My husband earns 7,000 rupees a month (£80) as a driver and it’s hard buying food to feed our three children,” she explains.
“So
when my neighbour told me about earning a huge amount of money as a
surrogate I contacted an agent who put me in touch with a clinic.
“I have my family, my three beautiful children, I don’t want any more so I’m not getting attached to these babies.
“I
am helping a woman fulfill her dreams while she is helping me provide a
better life for my own children. It works both ways.” Surrogate: Parvati Lal Bahadur
Shariq Allaqaband / Cover Asia Press
Parvati is carrying for a couple in South Africa and they
have met once. No one other than Parvati’s husband and mother know about
the pregnancy.
She says: “I have no doubts about doing this and
cannot wait to have the £4,500 I will earn in my hand, but I would
rather keep it private. I don’t want people to think badly of me.”The
surrogate houses where the women live for nine months are split into
dorms with areas to watch television, cook, sew and chat.
They’re
allowed visitors only on a Sunday. British mum in waiting Octavia said
this week: “We did not want to see her quarters. By Indian standards
they would be comfortable. By ours, they would not be considered
remotely homely.”
But as long as wealthy women struggle to conceive, there will be others in India poor enough to rent out their wombs.
With surrogacy costing up to $70,000 in the US compared to only $12,000 in India, many Western women are outsourcing pregnancy abroad.
It's a multi-million dollar industry that sees rural Indians receive the equivalent of 10 years' salary.
Over the course of nine months, we follow the lives of two women, who in each other seek solutions to the problems of poverty and infertility, and explore whether it's a relationship that is exploitative or mutually beneficial.
We examine their reasons for choosing cross continent surrogacy, and hear of the legal and emotional battles they can face.
The programme is both touching and revealing. The 'relationship' expected of each by the other won't always match and the language barrier doesn't help.
The social mother - the one who will bring up the child - must go through a full pregnancy but with a womb that's thousands of miles away.
Equally the surrogate must live through the term knowing that, while she participates in nature's greatest gift, the result of her labours will become someone else's responsibility just days after she delivers.
Away from these deeply personal stories many question the morality of international surrogacy, where rich meet poor in what's usually a one-time deal.
Defending the criticism is Doctor Patel, Director of the Akanshka Clinic, nicknamed 'cradle of the world'.
She believes the surrogates are empowered to change their lives, but is this really a choice when these same women can't afford to educate their own children, ultimately what role does money play?
If I were not stranded in New Delhi, I would be home in Maryland with my family. My flight was scheduled to arrive at the Dullas/Washington DC airport on Saturday at 7:25 in the morning. It is currently 8:10 am, Monday morning in New Delhi. Last night our airplane was grounded for the second time and we still have not beenhave given any explanation. The Continental crew at the Delhi airport are completely incompetent and could care less about customer service. It was total mayhem in section 3A of Delhi airport last night, and it appeared that no one cared, and there was no upper management to be found anywhere on site. After more than 30 hours of not even having a change of clothes passengers did convince airline officials to at least have someone pull our luggage out from the airplane so that we would have a change of clothing. That process did around 2 1/2 hours.
Prior to all of that, the buses came to pick us up at 5:30 on Saturday evening for a 10:15 flight. Our hotel is at the most 15-20 minutes from the airport. We arrived at Indira Gandhi Airport at 6:30, and left by 3:15 in the early morning hours. We all first started to get a glimpse that something was not right, when the staff kept saying that we would be boarding in 10 minutes, and we saw the staff of Continental start laughing. They were laughing because their was no plane to board. The communication from the staff at the airlines was horrific. They never keep us abreast of anything that was happening, but just continued the charade of saying that we would be boarding soon. Finally, we became aware that the problem was never fixed from the night before. They were in the process of trying to fix whatever was needed while we were in the airport. After keeping us and stringing us along for hours, they finally made an announcement around 1 am, stating that the flight was cancelled. I started crying at that point, and a flight captain was trying to console me. He told me that the plane was not safe to fly at all, but didn't get into many details, but said that a lot was wrong with the plane and he had no idea when that particular plane would be ready to fly again.
Several hours later we were told that a representative would be at our hotel at 5am to get everything settled and to make sure that all remaining passengers were on a flight home. Well dummy me, still wanted to believe these numb-nuts, and I stayed up until 6 am, waiting for a representative. No representative showed up, so I finally decided to get an hour of sleep. I asked the staff at the hotel to give me a wake up call at 7, which they did. I promptly put on the same clothes that I have been wearing for 36 hours and went to the lobby in hopes that I would see the Continental representatives, but all I saw was empty beautiful leather sofas.
The staff at The Grand, said they have not heard anything from Continental, nor has anyone come to the hotel. It is now 8:40 am, and we have no idea when we are going home. A number of people were able to allude the airport officials and book flights on Air France, and other airlines last night. Once airline officials saw what was happening no one else was allowed to go back into the airport, so those of us trying to get another flight were just out of luck. There are so many people with connecting flights and the flights back home are limited, so it appears a number of flights are already booked. If anyone has suggestions please feel free to call The Grand at 91-11-2677 1234 and ask for Crystal Travis.
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