Thanks everyone, for such a warm welcome. 😊
I'm glad my suggestions were useful to all of you as well.
And thanks Madhu, for the prompt and thrilling chapters. 😛
From what I heard, surrogate motherhood is still a debatable issue in India. In recent years, an increasing number of infertile couples from abroad go to India in search of women who are willing to be surrogate mothers. Some of these Indian surrogate mothers are paid quite a huge sum of money for their temporary "job". In addition, many of the surrogate mothers are showered with gifts of food and medicine and monitored with solicitous attention by the waiting parents, usually educated, sophisticated people who want to ensure that their investment yields its much-hoped-for fruit.
Likewise, potential surrogates must be between 18 and 45, in good health, and mothers in their own right, for physical and psychological reasons — physical, so they know what awaits their bodies, and psychological, so they feel less troubled about giving up the baby because they already have children. The egg that contributes to the embryo is never one of their own, coming instead from an anonymous donor or the intended mother, and then usually fertilized in vitro.
India has no laws regulating the fertility industry, only non-binding guidelines issued by the national medical research council. The group has urged the government to enact legislation to ensure protection of rights on all sides.
Traditional attitudes on sex and procreation, which make surrogacy seem incomprehensible and taboo to many, still prevail in the Indian countryside. There is an empathy with the childless in a conservative society that views producing progeny as an almost sacred obligation, and Hindu teachings about being rewarded in the next life for good deeds performed in this one.
Doctors who have assisted infertile couples from abroad in hiring surrogates in India insist that they guard against exploitation and provide high-quality care. They bristle at comparisons of surrogate mothers to people who sell their organs, an act they describe as perverse and completely different from harnessing the natural maternal cycle. It is counter-argued by other doctors that surrogate motherhood is not about losing any organ. It is a normal physiological process in a woman's body involving pregnancy and delivery. When you remove a kidney, then it becomes pathological.
Both sides of the debate agree that the fertility business in India, including "reproductive tourism" by foreigners, is potentially enormous. Current figures are tough to pin down, but the Indian Council of Medical Research estimates that helping residents and visitors beget children could bloom into a nearly $6-billion-a-year industry.
