Doree Shafrir has contributed to The New York Observer, The New
Yorker, Slate, and The Awl, and is the co-author of Love, Mom. She is a
former editor at Gawker. Her website is
www.doreeshafrir.com.
Indian
surrogacy is now a half-billion dollar industry. Doree Shafrir on why
American couples-especially gay men-are having children abroad for less
money and with fewer headaches.
Mike Griebe and Brad Fister had
tried everything to have a child. They explored adoption. They
researched what Griebe termed "a baby factory type deal," where you
basically pay for a "ready-made baby." They went to agencies that
promise to find babies in the United States. The Kentucky couple even
paid $20,000 to a Virginia woman to be a surrogate, only to walk away
when she insisted that if anything happened to Griebe, 38, and Fister,
30, that she would have rights to the baby.
"You get to see the
whole process. I got to watch the embryos go in. Those are things you
never get to see here. You follow them the whole way."
Then, one
day, while watching Oprah, they heard about a relatively new way to have
a child: using an Indian surrogate. But at first, Griebe and Fister
didn't think an Indian surrogate would be an option. "We just dismissed
it because when we searched it, we found that that clinic would only
deal with traditional couples," says Griebe-meaning straight couples.
After searching online, they came across the Web site for Kiran
Infertility Center, which guides foreign couples through the process of
hiring a surrogate mother in India.
After talking with Dr Samit, a
prominent embryologist in India, "We felt very comfortable with him,
unlike everybody else we had dealt with after that time," says Griebe.
The
two decided to use Fister's sperm for the pregnancy, and so he flew to
India. Fister met his surrogate who, he says, is married with two
children and told him the money she's making from the surrogacy will go
toward her children's education.
Fister says he was surprised at
how open the clinic was. "The whole process was a lot more hands-on than
it would be in the U.S.," he says. "You get to see the whole process. I
got to watch the embryos go in. Those are things you never get to see
here. You follow them the whole way." After one failed attempt and one
miscarriage, their surrogate is now due in April. They get updates,
including ultrasounds, via email.
"I flew to India and checked
out all the clinics," he said, before finally settling on Kiran.
Commercial surrogacy was legalized in India in 2002, and it is now
estimated to be a $445 million business. Griebe and Fister say they've
spent around $40,000 on the surrogacy process so far; $8,000 of that
goes directly to the surrogate mother. That may seem high, but Griebe
said that friends of theirs who are attempting to use an American
surrogate "are two years into this and still no baby, not even a
miscarriage, and they're already over $100,000. Every time they try,
they have to pay."
Kiran Infertility Center is one of the few to
specifically target gay couples. Homosexuality was only decriminalized
in India in July; even though it was rarely prosecuted, it was still a
social taboo until a few years ago, says Dr. Samit Sekhar, the
embryologist at the Kiran Infertility Centre in Hyderabad. "For us, it
doesn't make any difference," he says of the couple's sexual
orientation. However, the surrogate "doesn't know if she's carrying for a
gay couple or not." He said that Kiran has delivered 24 babies via
surrogates, with around nine of those going to gay couples.
It's
illegal for surrogates to be recruited directly by the hospital.
Instead, they're found by a social worker at an NGO, according to
embryologist Samit Sekhar. (When asked if it would be possible to
interview one of the social workers, Sekhar said that they do not speak
English.) "They do the initial counseling for us. Then after the basic
counseling is completed and the screening is done, they bring them to
the clinic. Then we do more screening from there," he says, including
medical and psychological screening.
"A year ago, I would have
said it was very difficult to recruit a surrogate," says Sekhar. "Now it
is becoming much more open. They get a decent amount of money. They get
free food, free boarding, and free clothes, and they are housed in a
nice place" for 12 months.
Sekhar says that Kiran can house up to
50 surrogates at a time. "They stay at the clinic. The non-pregnant
surrogates are housed in an apartment," he says. "There are two midwives
who stay in the clinic 24 hours a day, who take care of food, clothing,
medication and all that."
Of course, using Indian surrogates
raises ethical issues. An article in a recent issue of the Indian
Journal of Medical Ethics called into question some of the assertions by
clinic operators and surrogacy agencies regarding the women who are
surrogates. The practice of keeping the women at the clinic, ostensibly
to oversee their health and welfare, can also be interpreted as keeping
them held hostage, since they're not allowed to leave the grounds of the
clinic. The surrogates are often poor and illiterate, raising questions
about how much they understand about the contract they're
signing-including what happens if they have health complications or have
to terminate the pregnancy because of their own health concerns. There
are also questions about what would happen if the parents decided they
didn't want the baby.
But it's difficult for Westerners to
understand the way that the money the surrogates get changes their
lives-and how it would be nearly impossible for them to earn as much
money in such a short amount of time doing anything else. An engineer
would earn the same amount in the same amount of time. They are happy
with the money. It opens up a lot of windows for them at the same time.
They can now lead a comfortable life, according to Indian standards at
least. They can invest the money in a business, buy a small property.
They can send kids to school or college.
Fister plans on being in
India for the baby's birth; he's anticipating that he'll have to stay
there for about three weeks after the baby is born, during which time
he'll submit to a DNA test to prove he's the father and get a birth
certificate issued by the American Embassy. "People think you're doing
it in India because it's less expensive," says Fister, "but the main
reason we went to India is because of the legal issues. Here, there
would always be the chance of the mother coming back and saying, I'd
like to have visitation. Over there they can actually have it
legalized."
Doree Shafrir has contributed to The New York
Observer, The New Yorker, Slate, and The Awl, and is the co-author of
Love, Mom. She is a former editor at Gawker. Her Web site is
www.doreeshafrir.com.
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