India is planning to introduce new laws to regulate its booming “womb for rent” industry which has attracted dozens of Canadians to make babies overseas.
“Reproductive or surrogacy tourism” — as this trade is being referred to — is a booming business.
Valued at more than $450 million in India when the practice was legalized in 2002, the industry is growing at a rapid pace with Indian experts predicting the business will generate $2.3billion annually by 2012.
But the industry has been hit with a slew of messy international legal problems and ethical dilemmas prompting the country to look at to bring supervision to a largely unregulated practice.
One measure will require prospective parents prove infants born to a surrogate mother will have automatic citizenship in their home countries to avoid legal battles.
A second will stop clinics that perform the clinical procedures from sourcing, supplying and taking care of the surrogate mothers themselves.
Another issue being looked at is gender selection.
“The IVF clinics’ job is to do IVF (in vitro fertilization). We want them away from the potential areas where corruption and malpractice take place,” said Dr. R.S. Sharma, deputy director general of the Indian Council for Medical Research, was quoted in Indian media as saying.
One of the high profile cases to hit Indian courts involved a Canadian couple from Brampton, Ontario, who claimed they were cheated of a son in a test tube baby controversy.
The couple, identified as Amrik Singh and his wife Rupinder Kaur, filed a complaint with the medical authorities in Jalandhar, Punjab claiming that they had approached Vardhan Medical Centre to have a child through In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in 2005.
The claim the centre promised them a male child and charged them 500,000 rupees (about C$12,600).
The two-month IVF treatment was successful and Rupinder conceived. The centre allegedly told the couple they were going to have a son after several tests.
Amrik and his wife then returned to Canada where the couple was told by doctors that the baby was a girl and not a boy. Rupinder delivered the baby girl in Canada.
Owner Varish Vardhan disputed the claims made by the Canadian couple.
Under Indian laws, ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the fetus are illegal.
But many of India’s fertility clinics continue to offer a seemingly legitimate facade for the multi-billion dollar racket of gender determination in India.
In India, female feticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.
It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.
The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability — a bride’s dowry can cripple a poor family financially.
The northern states of Punjab and Haryana have some of the worst gender ratios in India.
Researchers in India and Canada said in the Lancet medical journal that prenatal selection and selective abortion is causing the loss of 500,000 girl births a year.
Over the last decade, an increasing number of couples are heading to India in search of cheaper fertility treatments, donor eggs and surrogate mothers.
For couples looking for fertility treatment, India is an attractive destination. They can avail themselves of treatment at a relatively low cost.
It is also easier finding a surrogate mother, and the cost of renting her womb to carry the fertilized egg is a fraction of what it would be in Canada.
In-vitro fertilization treatment involves the fertilization of the egg and sperm in a test tube. Once fertilized, the embryo is transferred into the uterus of the biological mother. In some cases, where the biological mother’s medical condition does not permit her to carry the fetus, a surrogate mother does the job.
Dr. Naina Patel of the Akanksha Fertility Clinic in Anand in the state of Gujarat has a small army of surrogate mothers.
When the South Asian Post visited her clinic in 2006, she estimated that about 50 women in the area are believed to be carrying babies for foreign couples.
“Infertility is a global problem and we have its global solution,” she said.
Doctors say 70 percent of the clients are Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who find their efforts to get a child cheaper in India.
“Most NRIs prefer surrogate mothers from India as it is easier to find one. An agency abroad may charge about US$30,000 and the surrogate mother is given another US$15,000.
Moreover the surrogate also enjoys certain rights over the baby,” Dr Patel told the South Asian Post.
“In India, the couple just needs to clear the medical bills and pay about Rs 1 lakh or more to the surrogate mother.”
The surrogate mother and egg donation industry is also catching on in other parts of India.
The Pune Fertility Centre in Shivajinagar announced a ‘surrogacy programme’ and invited ‘women in the 25-30 years age group’ to enroll as members, two years ago.
‘‘Monetary benefits are playing a key role in attracting women to act as surrogate mothers. The rent-a-womb contract for the surrogate mother can be as high as 10 lakh (about C$25,000),’’ Pune Fertility Centre lab director Shehbaaz Daruwala, was quoted as saying.
Daruwala said the demand for ‘‘eggs’’ were primarily from women with a genetic problem or with those whose ovaries don’t have eggs or from women who suffer from premature ovarian failure.
While wombs for rent in India may be legal, in Canada it is a different story.
The Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) Act states that no payment can be made to a sperm or egg donor for their donation nor can payment be given to a woman providing surrogacy services.
Section 6 of the AHR Act prohibits anyone from paying a person to act as a surrogate. It also prohibits anyone from receiving payment for arranging, offering to arrange, or advertising to arrange the services of a surrogate.
Fines under the Act range from C$250,000 to C$500,000.
But because all the activities related to the surrogacy contract are done in India, the general rule in law would say that Canada has no jurisdiction.