Column

What a mixed bag of blessings it is.

There’s the woman… or rather, the family. Who want(s) a child and cannot have it. For whatever reason.

After the due process of hope followed by suspicion, and finally by fears well-founded, and some likely blame, a reconciliation is arrived at: to bring a baby home.

Adoption is an obvious choice, but the world of possibilities includes an even more attractive option. Surrogate motherhood gives one a chance to find one’s blood flowing in the new baby’s veins.

Though surrogacy has been around and the first recognised surrogate mother arrangement was made in 1976 in the US, it has come into its own in India in the past years. And the stamp of Oprah Winfrey, who had Indian doctors as prominent speakers in her show about surrogate motherhood, is a signal that this form of reproduction has come of age in India.

But more often than not, the couples who seek the services of a surrogate mother are not Indian.

Like for everything else, India is an ideal outsourcing hub for reproduction by proxy too.

The availability of expert medical help, the fact that surrogacy has been legalised in 2002 and, of course, the low prices have fuelled the fact that an increasing number of westerners are turning to Indian women to bear their children.

Clinics that offer the service are many, and do thriving business. But the definite leader is the centre run by Dr Naina Patel in Anand, Gujarat, the pioneer in surrogate motherhood in India.

As they see it, Dr Patel and others like her, who offer commercial surrogacy, believe they are helping women help each other. They are also going about it the ethical way, making sure the money reaches the mother, that she is fed the right foods through her pregnancy, and monitored through the nine months and through a safe delivery. Post-partum needs are also taken care of.

The surrogate mother, on her part, not only benefits health-wise in general, but the money comes in handy to educate her own offspring or better her living conditions.

Everyone should be happy.

Without going into the flip side of the issue — which includes emotional entanglement of the surrogate mother with the baby she bears, and the possibility of exploitation of a surrogate mother by her family or even by the middlemen or the medical authority who approach her as more clinics find the potential of the business — one needs to acknowledge that surrogate motherhood is a trend that has come to stay.

Today, many of the women, who essentially belong to the economically poor strata, have to bear their pregnancies in secrecy, never acknowledging that they are vessels that bear another’s child. But with the trend gaining strength, sanction might follow.

The attitudes to adoption have changed. Many couples whose own parents would, had the need arisen, not have given serious thought to adopting a child, are open to the idea of taking a child home to bring up as their own. Similarly, it might only be a matter of time before attitudes to surrogacy change too.

But even more important than societal sanction is the need to build safeguards into the system, even now, while it still rests in responsible hands.

Sci-fi can see a story, like Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, when the state or some large corporate house will start banks where in-vitro fertilisation can happen on a mass scale, and surrogate mothers-to-be will line up for their turn to receive the results.

But till that happens, we need to think of the real lives that are involved at every stage. And in the case of couples from other countries, their own laws and rules come into play, complicating the issue for all parties. Real emotions, real health and real money are the players in this game.

And like any other serious voyage into the unknown, this budding enterprise too needs to be contained severely within the laws of humanity.

If not, instead of mending homes and making lives, the surrogate motherhood bogey will trample on hopes and crush innocents in the wake of its misuse.