beyondbrics

Over the last few years, India has emerged as a big hub for infertile Western couples seeking young women willing to serve as surrogate mothers for their babies.

The new and seemingly unlikely face of India’s outsourcing industry has been fuelled by the desperation of many women – often already mothers themselves -to help their families overcome poverty or pay for education as a key to their own children’s future.

Yet the largely unregulated business has generated many concerns, including worries about practices that could risk the surrogate mothers’ health.

Indian is now planning a draft law to clean up an industry which has been limited only by the ethics of local doctors – many willing to go to great lengths and push the young surrogates hard – to satisfy their affluent customers’ demands.

The Indian authorities woke up to the international legal repercussions after German authorities refused to grant citizenship and entry to twin boys born to a young Indian surrogate on behalf of a German couple.

Germany – which does not recognise surrogacy as a legitimate means of obtaining a child – finally related last month, two years after the boys were born, but other foreign European countries including France, Netherlands, do not recognise commercial surrogacy, which could mean headaches for prospective parents.

“It’s been a wild game,” said GR Hari, who runs the two-year-old Indian Surrogacy Law Centre, which he set up to advise prospective foreign parents on the legal aspects of surrogacy. “We don’t have any law controlling anything.”

It’s difficult to assess the precise size of India’s commercial surrogacy business, which was legalised in 2002. Relationship between prospective parents and Indian surrogates are private contracts, though often brokered through one of many hundreds of private Indian full-service fertility clinics.

The Confederation of Indian Industry estimates India’s international medical tourism industry – of which surrogacy is part – could be worth $2.3bn within the next two years.

Indian couples make up the bulk of the surrogacy business. But India’s most famous clinic for surrogate pregnancies said it helped 85 foreign couples through surrogacy last year, up from just a dozen three years ago. Hari said foreign interest in Indian fertility treatment, including surrogacy, is growing fast.

The proposed law, which could be taken up in the next Parliament session, would mandate the government to set up a databank of potential surrogate mothers and facilitate stricter monitoring of clinics, which would be left to focus mainly on IVF, rather than brokering entire transactions as most do now.

The law would also ban a surrogate from more than five births, including her own children, limit the number of embryos that could be implanted, and require foreign couples to prove surrogate babies would be granted home country citizenship.

Yet while the draft law may look tough on paper, Indian law enforcement is notoriously weak. Hari believes the world needs an international treaty to protect children born through surrogacy and prevent legal disputes. Meanwhile, India’s surrogate baby boom is likely to continue – unimpeded – for the foreseeable future.