Baby Makers: The Story Of Indian Surrogacy

By Gita Aravamudan

The baby makers are many. The couples who supply the genetic material, the embryologists who create test-tube babies, the gynaecologists who insert embryos into wombs and deliver the babies and, most importantly, the surrogates themselves. Thenthere are the agents who source the surrogates, organize fertility tourism packages and even arrange for babies to be ordered over the Internet using frozen genetic material supplied by the intending parents. Eggs, sperm and viable embryos can be bought and sold like any commodity. The terrain is complex, there are thorny ethical issues involved and very delicate emotional ones too.This is a book about surrogacy in India and how it transformed itself from a marginalized and socially unacceptable procedure into a multimillion-dollar industry. It is a non-judgemental, open-minded enquiry into surrogacy laws (rather, the lack of them) and the many cogs in the process. Baby Makers uses rigorous journalistic research and compelling personal narratives to paint a picture that is as fascinating as it is frightening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9789351362944

Gita Aravamudan

Gita Aravamudan started her journalistic career at Hindustan Times, New Delhi, at a time when there were very few women in journalism. She has also worked with and written for Indian Express, India Today, Sunday, Filmfare, Femina, Illustrated Weekly and Sunday MidDay.Her books include non-fiction (Voices in My Blood, Disappearing Daughters and Women Unbound) as well as fiction narratives (The Healing). She is also slated to do a book on surrogacy with HarperCollins India.

Book preview

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BABY MAKERS

A Story of Indian Surrogacy

GITA ARAVAMUDAN

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HarperCollins Publishers India

Table of Contents

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Praise

Dedication

Prologue

Beginnings

The Pioneer Surrogates

First Steps

Whose Baby?

Glitches

Sci-fi Scenarios

Climaxes

Law and No Law

Conclusions

Virgin Births and Womb Banks

Epilogue

Appendix 1: Glossary of Useful Terms

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Copyright

Praise

Praise for Disappearing Daughters

‘[This] is an important and valuable study ... Aravamudan has used investigative reporting to explore different aspects of female foeticide, its beginnings and its backlash, the ways it grows and how it can be stemmed.’ - The Hindu

‘Disappearing Daughters is a must-read for teachers, students, parents, political leaders and, especially, doctors. Lucidly written, it traces, through absorbing case studies and relevant data, the tragedy of Indians killing their girls en masse.’ - Outlook

‘A scorchingly honest and compelling account of female foeticide in India, the book is an important and valuable study ... [It] also busts myths and suggests ways forward that may save future generations of daughters, even if it is too late for the present.’ - Anindita Sengupta, Wordpress

Praise for Colour of Gold

‘Given that she has worked on various non-fiction stories and written a few issue-based books that concern society, Aravamudan’s works of fiction too are exceptionally well-researched.’ DNA

‘Gita Aravamudan definitely strikes the right chord by bringing out an amazing story that appeals to the senses of the reader.’ - The New Indian Express

Praise for Unbound: Indian Women @ Work

‘[Biz] icons ... rub shoulders with hairstylist Rachel and call-centre employee Sumathi and discuss topics such as gender discrimination and the difficulties of balancing home and office. The stories ... provide a valuable guide to the brave new world of today’s women professionals.’ The Hindu

Praise for The Healing

‘This novel signposts the changing ways of contemporary India.’ - The Hindu

Dedication

To my solid pillars of support – Aravamudan, Ananth, Sriram, Shuba and Layaa

Prologue

Motherhood is a state of being, which has, from time immemorial, been defined by a set of cliched, internalized words that are as powerful as they are evocative.

Woman, womb, mother ... in our minds, the creation, sustenance and nurturing of life hinges on the blending of these words into synonymity.

But does being a 'mother' necessarily include the whole gamut of actions like conceiving, carrying, bearing and rearing a child?

What if a woman's womb is removed? Or if she cannot conceive? Or, if she can never give birth to a baby?

Does that make her less of a woman? Or less of a nurturer? Or, indeed, a mother?

We live in times when much that was considered natural has been called into question. Today, a woman can generate a life which is later grown in another woman's womb and is nurtured and raised by a third person. So then, does the biological mother cease to be the mother of the child she created? And what about the woman who provides the womb? Does she cease to be a mother once she has given birth? And what is the definition of the third person who has no biological connection with the baby, but is a nurturer? Which of these three is the real mother?

Who is a mother? And why? Can a father mother a child? Does an embryo have to have a traceable genetic history through its mother?

These questions, contrary to common sense as they seem, need to be asked because we live in a changed world, where a baby need not be the product of a simple act of procreation involving a man and a woman. It's also a world in which the baby makers can play a very important role in the creation, sustenance and nurturance of life.

Scientific advancement has thrown up many permutations and combinations in this field. Today, babies can be ordered over email, created in Petri dishes from frozen genetic material, and grown in wombs that are considered to be nothing more than gestational vessels. Today, human eggs are traded like any other commodity and fertile women sell their eggs to sterile women for the creation of babies to whom they are not genetically related.

Humans, who are created from the embryos born of anonymous eggs and sperm, and grown in the wombs of surrogate mothers, will never know their genetic history.

In order to remain relevant in this brave and ever-changing world, the concept of motherhood, as we know it, needs to be redefined.

Beginnings

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December 2011

New Jersey, USA

It was on a cold, snowy day that Cathy finally decided she and Dennis would go to India to hire a surrogate. Maybe the freezing temperature outside had something to do with the decision. Maybe she had just reached a point of no return. It came to her in a flash as she stood at the window, staring at the snow. She had to pack her bags for India.

Some months ago, she heard the verdict she was dreading. She wouldn’t be able to carry a baby to term. She had been receiving fertility treatment for more than three years now. She had gone through four abortions. But she always had hope. A feeling that something would work. That some miracle would happen.

Until that fateful day, when the doctor uttered the words she never thought she would hear. ‘Cathy, your only option now is to hire a surrogate.’

Her first reaction was ‘No!’

The baby had to be hers. Dennis had an eighteen-year-old daughter from his first marriage. A baby was not so important to him. But she wanted to have a child of her own. Born from her womb.

Cathy went into depression. Dennis couldn’t console her. ‘Why don’t we hire a surrogate like the doctor said, Cathy?’ he asked repeatedly. ‘If that’s the only way out, why don’t we give it a shot?’

‘Because,’ Cathy retorted, ‘among other things, we cannot afford it. We’ve already spent so much on this fertility treatment, which didn’t work. Also, I hate the thought of my baby growing in some unknown woman’s womb. Maybe I would come to terms with that eventually. But where will we find the money to hire a surrogate? And where can we find someone we can trust? We live in New Jersey, remember?’

They knew that if they were forced to hire a surrogate to carry their baby, New Jersey wasn’t an option. Although the Baby M case had played out here almost twenty-five years ago, the repercussions could still be felt. Surrogate contracts in New Jersey were confusing and, more importantly, still not enforceable.

A few weeks later, after she recovered a bit, Cathy started trawling the net, trying to figure out what options were available to her. California was a possibility since its laws were more user-friendly and surrogates were easily available, but the cost was way beyond their means. Eastern European countries like the Czech Republic, and Asian countries like India and Bangkok, were better options as the laws permitted surrogacy and surrogates were much more affordable.

But for a woman who had never left New Jersey, every place looked frighteningly alien.

Eventually, India emerged as an alternative. The medical facilities were good. Fertility tourism was flourishing. There were no laws banning surrogacy, and there were many poor women eager to rent out their wombs for a price. Most importantly, a lot of Indians spoke English and it would be easier to negotiate with the doctors, agents and lawyers there. Maybe the surrogates couldn’t speak English, but that didn’t matter; it could even work out to be an advantage.

She started going through the extensively written blogs of couples who had hired surrogates in India.

And then Mabel brought her the Oprah Winfrey recording.

Mabel and Cathy were best friends from school. Mabel had married Cathy’s brother Kent at a very young age, and they had three grown-up children. Cathy had just drifted from one relationship to another until she met Dennis when she was in her late thirties. For the first time in her life, she wanted to settle down with a man and start a family of her own. But it was almost too late.

Cathy sighed and turned away from the window. She picked up the Oprah recording and settled down into her comfortable old sofa to watch it for the umpteenth time.

The year was 2007. Oprah was talking to Jennifer and

Kendall, a handsome Caucasian couple from LA. Red-haired Jennifer wiped her tears as she spoke of the trauma she went through.

‘As a child, I was always told I could achieve anything I wanted to if I tried hard enough,’ she said. ‘Then, I found out that I couldn’t have a baby, no matter how hard I tried. You don’t know how horrible and painful it can be to not get pregnant. It’s the worst kind of failure.’

Cathy wiped away her own tears. Jennifer looked so fit and young, and had such lustrous hair. She used to look the same when she married Dennis and before she had begun her fertility treatments. Now, her body was bloated and her once-luxurious blonde hair was beginning to thin. But she was as determined as Jennifer to have a baby.

Unlike Jennifer, she conceived. Not once, but four times. But she never carried the baby to term.

She toggled through the images with the remote buttons until she came back to the part she was searching for: ‘We had spent all our savings,’ Jennifer said, ‘and this was our last chance. We decided to go to India to find a surrogate to carry our baby.’

Yes. That was the only option they too were left with now. They had to do it right away, before their savings ran out completely. And they became old. Cathy was forty-two. Dennis was close to fifty. They couldn’t wait any longer.

Jennifer was rattling along in a rickshaw with Oprah’s reporter Lisa Ling. They were in Anand, a remote town in Gujarat, India. She showed Lisa the places where she and Kendall had spent three weeks undergoing IVF treatment. They were at the Akanksha IVF Center, talking to Dr Nayana Patel. There were surrogates with their faces half covered with surgical masks around them. ‘These are the people most important to me,’ the doctor smiled, holding the hands of the surrogates next to her. ‘And this surrogate is like God to them. Without her, they would never have had their babies.’

Cathy pressed rewind and paused at the clip where Lisa and Jennifer were looking out of their hotel window in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s capital. ‘Certainly not like Long Beach, California,’ Lisa said as she pulled the curtain aside and looked down at the tenements close by. ‘This is a country where hundreds of millions live in destitute poverty.’

Cathy had a momentary panic attack. Lisa’s words became a blur. ‘They hired a total stranger to have their baby. I really don’t know what Jennifer was thinking. I really want to know why they would come to a developing country like this. Cows on the street, chaos everywhere.’

Oh my god! Would she be able to cope? How could she leave the comfort of her New Jersey home and go to some alien land and hire a ‘complete stranger’ to have a baby for her? The whole idea seemed bizarre in retrospect.

They really couldn’t afford to hire a surrogate in the US, Jennifer had told Oprah and, besides, there were legal issues involved.

Over the past couple of weeks, Cathy had done her homework. She knew it would cost her over $80,000 to hire a surrogate in the US, while the entire package, including the airfare to India, would cost her less than $30,000. Also, in India, proper contracts were drawn up by which the surrogate relinquished all rights over the baby as soon as it was born. She had a gut feeling that if she tried to hire a surrogate in New Jersey, she would face a lot of problems. She might even end up being blackmailed by the surrogate to pay more if she wanted her baby.

Cathy had come to the segment in the video where Jennifer and Lisa were seated inside a rickshaw, making their way through Anand. Jennifer showed Lisa the hotel where they had stayed. Kendall had to collect his sperm samples in the hotel and take it to the clinic in a special container, she told Lisa. ‘Sperm in a rickshaw,’ Oprah crooned when they came to this segment, sending her audience into splits.

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Bangalore, India

Rajappa pulled out a wad of notes from his shirt pocket to pay the rickshaw driver. His wife, Sharada, stood quietly on the road, waiting for him to end his transaction.

‘Are you sure this is the clinic?’ a doubtful Rajappa asked in Telugu. He looked at the small, unimpressive-looking building in front of him.

This was his first visit to Bangalore. ‘Be careful,’ his business partner Mani had warned him. ‘If you don’t speak Kannada, the rickshaw fellows in Bangalore will really take you for a ride.’ Rajappa took his advice very seriously. He was a shrewd businessman who ran two lodging houses in a pilgrim centre in one of the cities of Andhra Pradesh, south India. Although he had not travelled much outside his home state, he knew how to cope with crooks in big cities. After all, he and his wife had been travelling to Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, regularly for the last couple of years, for their expensive fertility treatment.

But all to no avail. This time, the treatment had to work. He couldn’t afford to keep spending money without having anything to show in return. This clinic had been recommended by the big doctor at the Chennai hospital.

‘Yes, yes,’ the driver snapped in an exasperated tone. He spoke in Telugu, but with a strong Kannada accent.

Rajappa had hired him through the owner of the lodge where they were staying. The owner told him how much he would have to pay and warned the driver not to overcharge him.

‘Here, see.’ The driver grabbed the scrap of paper from Rajappa and jabbed his finger at the address. ‘See. This is the same address as the one on the board. Look.’ He pointed to the board.

He thrust the paper back into Rajappa’s hand and started his vehicle, muttering to himself. He rattled off down the mud road before the worried-looking middle-aged couple could call him back.

Rajappa looked at his wife and said, ‘So this must be the clinic. See, it is written there in English.’

Sharada nodded. The Kannada script on the clinic’s board made no sense to her. But, fortunately, even she could read the English lettering though she had only studied till the ninth