For most lower-middle class women in India, surrogacy presents a unique opportunity to break free of poverty, though not without its repercussions — the surrogates are often ostracised and misunderstood as being “easy”. But these women are unfazed by all the surrounding controversy as they are driven to earn a better living for their families.
Earning a meagre Rs3,000 (S$89) per month as a nurse, Hansha struggles to make ends meet. After spending half of her earnings on rent for her squalid one-room flat that is equipped with neither electricity nor gas, she barely has enough cash to keep her 16-year-old son in school.
She worries constantly for her husband — a truck driver — who earns Rs5,000 per trip transporting goods on long haul journeys through India’s treacherous highways. Every time Hansha’s husband leaves, she said, it seems like he is saying his last goodbye.
Hansha also has to provide for her 15-year-old little sister and 57-year-old father who lost his leg in a railway accident. They currently live in a makeshift tent along a stretch of train tracks in the dusty town of Nadiad, some 22 kilometres away from Hansha’s flat in Anand.
“It’s very hard,” Hansha, 39, said in her native Gujarati. “I have to take care of my family and work also.”
Hansha works 14 hours a day, seven days a week, measuring the height and weight of patients, checking blood pressure and giving injections at Anand’s Akanksha Infertility Clinic.
It was through her work at the clinic that she learned of the financial rewards in being a surrogate.
Hansha became a surrogate mother in December 2007 and delivered twins — a boy and a girl — for a couple from the United States. Her services earned her Rs250,000 — almost seven years worth of her monthly income.
For many lower-middle class women in India, surrogacy represents an unique opportunity to escape the sinkhole of low wages and debt. Through surrogacy, women like Hansha can earn decades worth of savings in a mere nine months.
“This is the fastest route to money,” said Hansha.
Now, Hansha lives in a spartan three-room apartment with gas stoves and fluorescent ceiling lights, without having to worry about the rent. She has even paid off all her debts.
Being able to own, rather than rent, a house is very important in India because it protects you from being held to ransom by unreasonable landlords, Hansha said.
Caste discrepancy
To purchase her own apartment, 33-year-old Deepa has also become a surrogate mother. In 2007, she rented out her womb to an Indian couple from the United States and delivered a healthy baby boy.
However, the single mother was paid a higher fee as she was born into a higher Hindu caste (Brahmin), compared to Hansha. This is a common discrepancy in one of the most rigid class-bound societies in the world.
Many intended parents, especially those of Indian descent, would choose candidates based on their caste, said Deepa. “They do not mind paying a higher price for a higher-caste surrogate. It is a religious thing also,” she said.
Carrying a baby for nine months was not easy, Deepa recalled. Besides enduring labour pangs, she also had to hide her swollen belly from friends and relatives. In an intensely patriarchal society, social stigma is a risk that all surrogates carry despite the high dividends.
“They think very badly of this thing so I don’t want to tell,” Deepa said. “Because of financial reasons, people do this. Otherwise no one does this.”
Changing attitudes
Director of Anand’s Akanksha Infertility Clinic, Dr Nayna Patel has seen her fair share of people who are uneducated about surrogacy. “I have a surrogate’s father-in-law and his son who think that IVF is immoral and the surrogate has to sleep with someone else,” she said.
However, as Dr Patel observes, attitudes have changed and society has started accepting surrogacy. “Now men are coming to me and saying, ‘my wife wants to be a surrogate too’.”
Dr Patel, whom many fertility experts credit for bringing India’s reproductive industry to worldwide prominence, oversaw the rise in Gujarati women renting out their wombs over the past six years.
“In 2003, I could not find one surrogate. In 2005, I had just 18. But in 2008, I have 175 surrogates with me,” said Dr Patel.
Initially, doctors placed advertisements on newspapers to recruit surrogates.
As news of this get-rich-quick scheme spread, most of the applicants either came forth offering their services or were introduced by others, Dr Patel said. Locals who recommended healthy and financially needy women to the clinic were given a token sum in return.
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