Indian surrogate mothers listen to a doctor at 'surrogate mothers' home in Anand, near Ahmedabad. Photograph: Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images
In an age when people are getting married later, are choosing to live alternative or designer lifestyles, and the gap between rich and poor is ever-growing, we must be all the more vigilant as to how our lifestyles can continue to oppress others. Baby-markets are turning children into commodities even before they're born. The impulse to have a child of one's own, especially if it is biologically impossible between partners, is daunting. Yet we cannot allow our impulses to dictate actions that create more buying and selling of people, and rifts between "the haves" and "the have nots". There are children in Canada, the US, and the UK all waiting desparately for homes - many of whom have been shuffled around a good deal already. Instead of creating baby factories and destroying the lives of women and children for our own desires, perhaps we need re-tune our desires to make an impact on the lives children right before our eyes.
I would posit that the desire to have children is certainly not selfish, but the process of "rent-a-womb" certainly is, especially when considering children already needing homes and families. Thoughts? Questions? Reactions?
As Julie Bindel of The Guardian puts it:
The documentary Google Baby, transmitted on Channel 4 earlier this year features a clinic and "surrogacy house" in India, the "rent-a-womb capital of the world". Many of the women having babies for rich westerners have been pimped into surrogacy by their husbands, and are powerless to resist. The women sleep in cramped conditions and are controlled to the point of being told when to eat, drink and sleep. There are serious physical and mental health consequences for both the egg donor and the surrogate, and yet this practice is becoming increasingly normalised.
In India hundreds of brokers benefit from reproductive tourism now worth an estimated half a billion dollars a year. There are 350 clinics offering surrogacy around the country. Prices in India for the full service including eggs, drugs, the surrogate and all medical treatment are significantly lower than in Europe or the US, prompting many individuals and couples from Europe to opt for its services.
For the full article, click here: It Is Selfish to Have a Surrogate Baby
