Surrogacy a proliferating business in big metros, says a new study

A new study has found that poor women in cities such as Delhi and Mumbai are being lured for surrogacy at a price ranging from Rs 3-4 lakh per pregnancy and there is little concern for health or rights of surrogate mothers. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 17, 2013, 22:31:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Surrogacy is no more limited to smaller towns in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra. A new study has found that poor women in cities such as Delhi and Mumbai are being lured for surrogacy at a price ranging from Rs 3-4 lakh per pregnancy and there is little concern for health or rights of surrogate mothers.

The study in Delhi and Mumbai by advocacy group, the Centre for Social Research (CSR), showed agents were luring women from deprived backgrounds for surrogacy and no more smaller towns in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are sought after destinations for surrogacy.

That has also brought its ill-practices. "There was no payment structure for surrogate mothers, who opted for this business because of poverty and their wish to get their children educated. The report said some clinics pay little more than the initially agreed amount if the surrogate mother is carrying twins while most clinics don't pay anything extra."

"There is no rule related to the amount of compensation for the surrogate mother and was arbitrarily decided by the clinics," the report said.

Ranjana Kumari, Director CSR, said "Due to the commercialisation of surrogacy, the plight of the surrogate mother and the unborn child is often ignored."

The report also highlighted that surrogate mothers had no rights as all decisions related to surrogacy were taken by clinics and the commissioning parents. Most surrogate mothers are not informed about their rights and the contract is second mostly in second tri-semester.

Another trend noticed was of two or three surrogate mothers impregnated for same commissioning parents, without their knowledge to ensure a high success rate.

"In case the two or three surrogate mothers become pregnant, the surrogacy pregnancies would continue if the commissioning parents wanted to continue the pregnancies. If not, the healthiest pregnancy would be allowed to continue and the other pregnancies would be aborted by taking abortion pills, about which the mothers have no clue," the report said, adding that health of mother is concern only when health of fetus is an issue.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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