Even though India has the 9th largest economy in
the world, almost 30% of its inhabitants live below the national poverty line.
As a result, women are looking for effective ways to make good money, and one
way they’ve found to do so is to become surrogate mothers. Infertile couples in
the UK, where it is illegal to openly advertise surrogates, have increasingly
looked to India for help. Many women, either single are married, are heading
to India to find a surrogate mother creating a 2.3 billion dollar surrogacy
business. An Indian women “renting” her womb can expect to make up to 32,000
dollars for one pregnancy, where as she would make maybe $2,000 in an entire
year at a more traditional job.
The Discovery
Institute's Centre on Human Exceptionalism claims that this is a form of
biological exploitation taking advantage of young women in poverty. Larger,
wealthier nations are no longer simply outsourcing jobs, but are outsourcing
pregnancy as well. This is an entirely new spin on “bound labor”. Human rights
activists are worried about the physical risk to the women agreeing to be
surrogates, but also the emotional trauma of having the child she carried for nine
months taken away. Dr. Gour, director of Surrogacy Centre India in New Delhi,
counter acts the claims by saying that there is an intense physical and
emotional screening process for choosing who is eligible to surrogate. Women
who are in desperate poverty and unable to have proper prenatal care are not
chosen. Gour also states that many of the surrogate mothers feel like they are
doing good for the world by giving another, otherwise incapable, family the
blessing of a child.
I
believe this is a growing global issue. Multiple countries, mainly the UK and
Australia, are using Indian women to bear their children. Granted, the couples
using Indian surrogate mothers are typically infertile, but this is still a
dangerous situation. All a woman has, especially a poor woman, is her bodily
integrity; now inable to survive in poverty, or assist their families monetarily, they are voluntarily
giving their bodies to another person. While not nearly on the level of
prostitution, it is in the same category of services. I am reminded of the Hand Maid’s Tale, where only certain
women are allowed to have children, and the government is in complete control
of their sexual/bodily autonomy. Industries like Surrogacy Centre India have a large number of women at their disposal, who they can use to make money off of until the woman has exceeded 5 births. After that, she is no longer needed, and totally without any job training other than enduring pregnancy. In relation to my previous blog post, I would
say India is on the verge of a serious women’s rights crisis. Not only are Indian
men attacking educated women, but poor women are becoming subject to the needs
of foreign couples. I think the worth of a woman needs to be realized in India,
and the rest of the world, as well!
Dylan Reddish
6pm, 2/5/13
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