Online Features Editor Meg Lawrence debates the realities and ethics behind paying for surrogate mothers in impoverished circumstances.
There is no price you can put on a life. Yet Dr Nayna Patel, founder of the world’s first ‘baby factory’ in Gujarat, India, has turned surrogacy into a profitable business.
Charging hopeful parents around £28,000 per child in her back street clinic, Dr Patel is now opening a new, multimillion-pound complex which has been dubbed by many as a ‘baby factory.’ Consisting of a hotel, gift shop and hospital, the complex will be the setting for thousands of surrogate exchanges. Future parents will be able to stay in the hotel overnight, and take their baby home the next day.
Dr Patel’s clinics have so-far enabled hundreds of would-be parents, predominantly from Western backgrounds, to have children. She has delivered almost 600 babies through surrogacy in a decade, housing around 100 surrogates in one clinic at any given time.
Bobby and Nikki Baines, a British couple who used Dr Patel’s surrogacy service, said: ‘Before 2000, we were looking for a surrogate in the UK. None came about – actually one or two did but they were bad apples. I’m sure there are some good surrogates here but the ones we came across were not too good. That’s why we went to India.’
Another client of Patel’s, who wished not to be named, described why the clinic was so appealing to her, stating that: ‘When I was told by my doctor they could get someone in Stockton [California], I don’t know what they’re eating, what they’re doing. Their physical environment would have been a concern for me.’
She added: ‘The way they have things set up here is that the surrogate’s sole purpose is to carry a healthy baby for someone… The clinic wants to keep a separation, this is what your job is: I’m the mother. She’s the vessel.’
It is easy for Patel’s customers to highlight the positives in this arrangement, and for them there are many. However, whilst the surrogates provide the ultimate gift to these families, they are given very little in return.
The right to have a family and experience parenthood is an entitlement that should be available to anyone who wants it, and surrogacy is a great option for those who are unable to have children themselves. However, the line between a good deed and honest exchange and something far more exploitative is crossed when taken into account the poverty that these surrogates are living in.
Whilst hopeful parents pay £28,000 for their surrogate children, a meager £4,950 of this is given to the women who are inseminated, carry and give birth to the children. Dr Nayna Patel receives the other £17,250, in a transaction that seems to have more to do with business than compassion for human life.
These fees exploit both couples who are so desperate to have a child, and the women who are living on the breadline. Nonetheless, Dr Patel insists that she is offering these women a lifeline, saying that: ‘Surrogacy is one woman helping another.’
Dr Nayna Patel (front centre) is opening the new ‘baby factory’
‘These woman are doing a job,’ she says. ‘It’s a physical job – they are paid for that job… These women know there is no gain without pain.’ These are harsh sentiments coming from a woman who seems to have a greater vested interest in profits than emotions.
Despite the apparent exploitation of India’s surrogates, they appear to be satisfied with their roles. Papiya, a surrogate mother who is expecting twins for a couple in America, stated in an interview that she planned to buy a house with her most recent payment, saying: ‘Having twins means we get a bigger fee… Last time I was a surrogate, I bought white goods, a car and lent some to my sister-in-law.’
In a recent BBC4 documentary entitled House of Surrogates, Dr Patel commented that: “There are… many needy females in India…The food, shelter, clothing and medicine, healthcare is not free for all in India. People have to fend for themselves.” To this, a contented surrogate added: “The house I live in at the moment is a rented house, this one will be much better…My parents will be pleased that their son and his wife have managed to build a house. Our status in society will go up, which will be a good thing.”
In comparison with the typical wage in India, the fee that Dr Patel pays is high. According to the website www.wakeupcall.org around 75 per cent of the Indian population are living below the poverty line. The poverty line is estimated to be an earning of Rs. Ten per day, which amounts to Ten pence in England. India’s minimum wage is an average of Rs. Fifty per day, equalling Fifty pence.
Set against this backdrop of poverty, it is understandable that Patel’s clinics have been labeled as exploitative ‘baby factories.’ A little means a lot to these women, and Patel is able to satisfy them without giving them what they truly deserve.
Amitabha Sadangi, the International Development Enterprises’ CEO, says that there are millions in India who are still living in poverty. ‘The way forward is to create sustainable employment opportunities, income generating opportunities, make them self-reliant and totally independent.’ Patel’s employment opportunities certainly don’t fit this mould.
Perhaps the most devastating fact in this story is that Indian child mortality rates are still so high, with up to 63 deaths per 1,000 births. A woman can deliver a healthy baby to a Western family, and yet her own baby can become ill, as a result of India’s poverty. Victor Aguayo, UNICEF India Chief of Nutrition and Development, said: ‘The high levels of child malnutrition seen in Madhya Pradesh are the result of a ‘perfect storm’ for children that associates high levels of malnutrition in mothers, poor child feeding practices in the first two years of life and high levels of infection in children’s environments; for many children, this is compounded by food insecurity and poverty in their households and limited access to basic services for them and their mothers.’
Surrogacy is rather a sterile term, and amidst talk on insemination, payment and contracts, it is easy to overlook the fact that surrogate mothers feel a connection with the babies they carry and give birth to, only to have their ties cut short. On the other hand, surrogacy gives people who may never have been able to start a family one last chance.
It remains fact that Dr Nayna Patel has and continues to manipulate the financial situation of India to help women, and turn a profit at the same time. Whilst levels of poverty in India grow in parallel with the demand for surrogate mothers in the West, Dr Patel’s business will continue to grow.
Dr Nayna Patel calls herself a feminist. If this were truly the case, she would invest her vast profits in educating these women whilst they were staying with her, so that they have other means of escaping poverty. Surrogacy is a great gift, but not when one woman is making profit out of other women’s poverty.
Meg Lawrence, Online Features Editor
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