A decade back, Surrogacy was what we all had read somewhere, seen on TV, heard in context to some Hollywood movie actor, but none of us knew anyone in our neighborhood or relatives, who had undergone surrogacy.
Things slowly changed in the past 5 years, when we started to understand what Surrogacy is all about. Read more about it, and it became a bit more acceptable to us in the society as many movie actors went open about it. But today, it is something that we all know to be REAL.
Yes! Today many patients opt for Surrogacy due to variety of medical conditions like missing uterus, congenital abnormalities in uterus, advanced maternal age, recurrent pregnancy losses, cancer survivors and severe health issues which render them at risk if pregnancy is carried to term.
Moral Policing seems to invade even this subject where many think that patients these days are opting for surrogacy as they think it is the easier way out. According to Dr. GajendraTomar who is an IVF and Infertility Specialist (Indore Infertility Clinic, Indore, India) and handles about 4 to 5 cases of surrogacy each month, the kind of patients who wish to opt for surrogacy are genuinely the one’s who would not stand a chance to parenthood if surrogacy is not offered to them.
The question here is ‘Who are we to deprive these patients of the joy of parenthood?’
Another very genuine curiosity that most of us have is, who are these surrogate mothers?
Or
What kind of woman choose to become Surrogate Mothers?
Dr. GajendraTomar clarified that surrogate mothers are usually women from economically deprived background. They are from low income group who wish to become surrogate mother so that they can earn a substantial amount that ranges from 5 to 7 lacs within one year and invest the money in either education of their growing children, or buy a house/land of their own.
For a working class that has limited amount of education and limited family support to sustain a full day job, surrogacy seems like an easy way out where the woman can stay at home catering to her family and at the same time earn the money within a year’s time. Most of the women who become surrogate mother’s do so in agreement with their families and choose to stay at their homes during the pregnancy.
But the current Indian Surrogacy Bill which has been passed by Lok Sabha, does not allow commercial surrogacy. In Commercial Surrogacy, a woman becomes a surrogate mother for commercial reasons i.e. money. Current Surrogacy Bill only allows “Altruistic surrogacy” where, the expectation is that someone like a relative of the patient will offer to become a surrogate mother for altruistic reasons and no money will be exchanged. This new bill on surrogacy bas been a topic of many debates and once passed by Rajya Sabha, shall become a law.
Infertility Specialists are the only ones who are a witness to suffering of both the parties. On one hand they see the amount of struggle a commissioning parent has gone through their repeated failed attempts to pregnancies and on the other hand they see a needy family of the surrogate, who do not seem to have better way of earning this substantial amount of money in any other legal fashion within such a short time. We hope that this noble and self-sustaining arrangement between the two parties continues in future and is used without exploiting both the parties.