Baby Traffic
- by Rita Dhaliwal

It sounds like a win-win scenario. A couple unable to have a child pay a willing and able woman in India to carry a child for them. The couple finally have the child they’ve been dreaming of and the surrogate receives money with which to improve her own and her family’s lives. When it plays out without a hitch, it is indeed a win-win. However, it’s a situation where any number of complications could arise, including health issues for the surrogate. Therefore, it’s shocking that there’s no legal framework to protect the surrogate, the biological parents or the rights of the child.

There are “guidelines” but no laws to govern commercial surrogacy in India, an enterprise that some describe as “outsourcing babies.” The industry (for lack of a better word) is so unregulated that there aren’t any official statistics on how many babies are being born to Indian surrogates hired by parents from other countries. Some estimates put the number of surrogate births at 400 last year and Indian fertility clinics are reporting a 400 per cent increase in demand from foreigners.

For many aspiring parents around the world, surrogacy is not a viable option in their own countries due to financial or legal reasons. In the U.S., surrogates are usually paid about $25,000 to carry a fetus. In India, surrogates are reportedly paid about $6,500 to carry a fetus. In Canada, under the Assisted Human Reproduction Technology Act of 2004, a surrogate who carries a fetus cannot legally be paid for carrying the child; she can only be reimbursed for expenses such as prenatal vitamins and medical costs.

Renuka Chowdhury, India’s minister for women and child development, commented on the lack of regulation in India last month after a meeting with experts in New Delhi to discuss proposed legislation. “It’s a free for all,” said Chowdhury. “We have no figures. What happens if a surrogate mother dies during childbirth? What if she has multiple births? . . . We do not want surrogacy to become unfettered like the organ trade. India has become a cheap-deal hub, which is very worrying. We need to put a regulatory authority in place.”
No kidding.

Chowdhury said that the government plans to “come out with [the legislation] by next year.”
An article published in The Times of India in February questioned how laws regarding the minimum and maximum age of surrogates or how many embryos could be implanted in a woman at one time would be enforced: “In a country crippled by abject poverty,” asked the article, “how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?”

Yes, enforcing laws will be difficult, but surely an absence of regulations is not the answer. By failing to regulate the so-called outsourcing of babies, the Indian government (which actively promotes medical tourism) has left women extremely vulnerable to exploitation by middle-men and others who see an opportunity to prey on impoverished women. For instance, it’s not difficult to imagine that there are those who will take advantage of women who can’t read or write and therefore might be duped into accepting less money than they are entitled to while middle-men pocket the profits. These women need someone to protect their rights, something that simply isn’t going to happen where there are no regulations.

You don’t have to be a feminist to wonder if it would have taken so long — after all, commercial surrogacy was legalized in India in 2002 — for the government to decide that regulation was needed if it were men’s health and not women’s bodies involved.

One hopes that, as in the case of the Indian government’s efforts to put a stop to female infanticide and abortions due to sex-selection, the proposed laws won’t be another example of too little, too late.