Outsourcing pregnancies to India

[rainbow4321]

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/04/22IndiaWomen.html

As temp jobs go, Saroj Mehli has landed what she feels is a pretty sweet deal. It's a nine-month gig, no special skills needed, and the only real labor comes at the end — when she gives birth. If everything goes according to plan, Mehli, 32, will deliver a healthy baby early next year. But rather than join her other three children, the newborn will be handed over to a U.S. couple who are unable to bear a child on their own and are hiring Mehli to do it for them.

She'll be paid about $5,000 for acting as a surrogate mother, a bonanza that would take her more than six years to earn on her schoolteacher's salary. "I might renovate or add to the house, or spend it on my kids' education or my daughter's wedding," Mehli said.

"It's win-win," said S.K. Nanda, a former health secretary in Gujarat state. "It's a completely capitalistic enterprise. There is nothing unethical about it. If you launched it somewhere like West Bengal or Assam" — both poverty-stricken states — "you'd have a lot of takers."

She acknowledges that money is the primary reason women have lined up to be surrogates; without it, the list would be short, if not nonexistent. Payment usually ranges from about $2,800 to $5,600, a fortune in a country where annual per-capita income hovers around $500.

[Haole Girl]

1. What next?

Heaven forbid they simply adopt the million unwanted children on India orphanages. Ugh.

[PublicWrath]

2. Yes, aren't there any orphaned children anymore?

WTF is wrong with people?!!!

[rainbow4321]

4. Is it still a "good deed" if they are **paid**??

Somehow, it seems to me, that to be considered a genuine good deed,
an act should be done for free.

Same article:
But Patel cites cultural components as well — an empathy with the childless in a society that views producing progeny as an almost sacred obligation, along with Hindu teachings about being rewarded for good deeds in the next life.

[havocmom]

5. Donated egg, implanted...

sounds like there's a chance it's designer, on demand babies for rich couples with no risks to them and plenty for poor women in a country with a lot of deaths among pregnant women. Hmmm, disposable wombs. How chic... NOT!

We get closer to The Handmaid's Tale every friggin day :grr:

[Blue_Tires]

3. lol...well you know how important it is for some people

to 'pass down the genes' as if the survival of humanity depended on it, lol

[barb162]

9. that's right

but too many feel their genes have to be carried on

[electron_blue]

6. Wow - so what does it say about me that I find this really bothersome,

and yet I don't find it bothersome when the surrogate is in the U.S. Time for some introspection....

[targetpractice]

7. Same feeling...

It's probably because surrogates in the US are paid much much more. This is a disgusting example of cheap labor conservatism to the extreme.

[PublicWrath]

8. It reminds me of the reports that Americans go kidney shopping

in the third world.

[havocmom]

10. Yeah, like people in third world are just one more natural resource

to exploit. :grr:

[shadowknows69]

14. Pretty much always have been

all the have nots are cattle for the haves. Moo.

[crikkett]

20. well, their genes are being patented, what''s the diff? n/t

[Gormy Cuss]

24. And if the baby is born disabled...

I wonder if the American couple will be required to adopt/bring home the baby.

[PassingFair]

30. "cheap labor"?

:rofl:

"This is a disgusting example of cheap labor conservatism to the extreme."

[JVS]

34. *snort*

[Kailassa]

23. I find it all bothersome,

because I don't believe I could ever give up a child that I'd carried in my womb for 9 months without terrible, long-lasting grief.

Perhaps other women are different. I'd hate a woman to realize after the baby was born that she felt this way, and still have to give it up.

[nashville_brook]

11. HANDMAIDS TALE via Bali-wood

[mom cat]

12. Good point. The third world 's people are being used as spare parts

and incubators.

[crikkett]

21. I think that's Bollywood

usu don't pick on spelling but Bali / Bolly is too difft
sorry for abbrv./sick dog on lap :(

[nashville_brook]

28. i always imagined it at bali -- like the place, but duh, thanks

bali's not in india.

i've never seen it in print -- should have googled. :)

[fujiyama]

13. This is

just plain creepy...

[DemExpat]

15. Talk about commodification of human life!

:puke:

DemEx

[pokercat999]

16. Homo-sapians are some really fucked-up animals...eom

[Triana]

17. Ditto that pokercat (n/t) Fu'd up species.

[Gin]

18. will that child have dual citizenship? or just be an Indian citizen?

Beam me up Scotty!

[pokercat999]

31. Actually a great question

It seems to me there are many legal questions including citizenship. If they bring her here to deliver the child is it a US citizen? If she has the child in India can they get it out of the country without trouble with the Indian authorities?

[Samurai_Writer]

19. Just when I thought I couldn't be more sickened

by this capitalist, greedy, society. I've always found surrogacy, even in the US, to be disgusting. There are 500,000 children in foster care in the US right now who need parents. But these infertile, rich, white couples *HAVE* to have a healthy white infant, and if it can have their own genes, who cares if they have to pay some poor woman to have it for them? Who cares what happens to the woman afterwards? I highly doubt these women will just forget about a baby they carried for nine months and gave birth to, even if it isn't biologically 'theirs'. What a sick, sick world.

[hippiechick]

22. Why is that legal when this (link) isn't ???

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x984864



:shrug: I really, truly don't understand.

[Fredda Weinberg]

25. I think it's a great idea

Men don't have to suffer pregnancy - why should women who can afford surrogate wombs?

I find the prevailing attitude here as quaint as the religious zealots who eschew contraception ... to me, this is as much a woman's choice as whether or not she chooses to procreate.

[entanglement]

36. Is it possible you don't realize the irony in your statement?

It seems you care only about the rich woman, not the impoverished one who is (likely) doing this out of financial desperation and probably risking her life to give birth to a baby that isn't her own.

[ckramer]

26. This is crazy, and don't forget the baby carries the mother's gene too

This didn't sound good.

[Miss Chybil]

32. The egg comes from the American mother, the sperm from the American

dad and the womb from the Indian mother. The genes all come from the donating parents, not the incubator.

The only thing that bothers me about this are the orphans that won't get adopted because of this. Other than that, I really don't care.

[entanglement]

35. I suppose the parent poster is worried

about 'genetic purity' or some such pseudo-scientific racialist nonsense.

[shrike]

27. There are some women who physically can't bear a child

despite the fact that they have egg-producing ovaries. However, most situations involve a relative, a sister or mother even, carrying the pregnancies to term. So a woman who goes womb-shopping is not necessarily lazy or unwilling to bear a child herself.

Finding a surrogate in India is the bizarre part.

[sweetheart]

29. outsource children to india

Then the US can import only the ones they want,
and leave the rest in india.

[JVS]

33. Is this really outsourcing? Is this taking jobs that Americans would do?

[superconnected]

37. a lot of women couldn't do this. I couldn't.

"I might renovate or add to the house, or spend it on my kids' education or my daughter's wedding," Mehli said.

ewww. Gee so you'd give up your own kid for that. And feel great that you're helping others. Sure.

I don't think shes actually interested in helping other though. I think she just wants to renovate a house.

It's kind of sickening to see a woman treat child bearing so inconsequentially. At least in my opinon...

guess that's what really bothers me about the article.