Smug British couple using Indian Surrogate as 'receptacle' for their biological child

[Romilly70]

This article was in the DM (yes I do read it, although I know it's shit).

I was hoping this was a spoof article given their names.
I just cannot believe that people like this woman actually exist!

"Willingly" doing something because you live in crushing poverty and you have very few options does not make it unexploitative.

Oh sorry I'm wrong according to this women in the US living below the poverty line cannot become surrogates.

The smugness is almost certainly the DM spin.

But that does not mean there are huge ethical issues here.

If the 'vessel' dies in childbirth or suffers adverse health as a consequence of her pregnancy, do the bio parents foot her bills for that?

Interesting article

Greythorne - from that link:

Last May, for instance, a young surrogate named Easwari died after giving birth at the Ishwarya Fertility Clinic in the city of Coimbatore. A year earlier, her husband, Murugan, had seen an ad calling for surrogates and asked her to sign up to earn the family extra money. As a second wife, Easwari was hard-pressed to refuse. The pregnancy went smoothly and she gave birth to a healthy child. But Easwari began bleeding heavily afterward, and the clinic was unprepared for complications. Unable to stop Easwari's hemorrhaging, clinic officials told Murugan to book his own ambulance to a nearby hospital. Easwari died en route. The child was delivered to the customer according to contract, and the fertility clinic denied any wrongdoing. But in a police complaint the husband suggested that the clinic had essentially dumped responsibility for his dying wife. The official investigation was perfunctory. The clinic did not respond to emailed questions for this story.

Maryz I am bit about your comment:

And I wouldn't call the surrogate a slave, I would call her an entrepreneur - she is using her talents (the ability to have a baby) to improve the lot of her other children. Good on her - it might be that her alternative is domestic work (for practically no money) or prostitution. It is her right to choose

Sorry but I feel these surrogates have no choice whatsoever, calling her an entrepreneur sounds unbelievably patronising. I'm sure she would much rather be working in a job where she is not effectively selling her body (to call prostitution a choice, when it's more likely the last resort of a desperate woman is utterly offensive.)

In some of the articles linked y saintlyjimjams it talks about women living in the slums and how they use surrogacy to buy a flat and pay to educate their children.

I have seen slums in south asia and they are basically giant landfill sites with people living under bits of corrugated iron and scraps of wood.

There's no council house waiting list for single mums, nhs or free school places so this kind of surrogacy imho is utterly exploitative.

Yes but it's not me living in abject poverty in India is it without little means of escaping the 'poverty trap'. Like everything else in life, the poorer you are the less feel you have to lose. I'd rather people had some means to escape the grind of their daily existence. I'm not naive saintly and I did say there needs to be controls and regulation to ensure the protection of the surrogate mmother and baby

We all exploit to a certain degree though dont we, it's naive to think otherwise. Those goods on the High Street to keep prices competitive, the majority of it is made in India and S.E Asia in conditions less favourable to say the least than it would be back home. Lots of poor rural peasant farmers flocking to the factories of China, working without the cushion of our Health and Safety laws for 12-14hrs per day often leaving their families behind. Do we pause for thought for these people when we make our TopShop, M & S, Zara, Next, Primark etc purchases or we just happy to see prices become lower

I dont need to work 12-14hrs in a factory doing backbreaking work or rent out my womb because my opportunities aren't so limited but I wont let my western sensibilities blind me to the fact that people in other parts of the world have to get by with a lot less and often without the things we take for granted here

I think you need to read this bakingaddict I'm not sure surrogacy is not always quite the escape for women we imagine.

The Centre for Social Research, an NGO, revealed after talking to nearly 100 surrogate mothers and 50 commissioning parents in Anand, Surat and Jamnagar in Gujarat, that surrogacy has not gone down well with their husbands and children. "We found some disturbing trends. For instance, though the husbands do not mind their wives to act as surrogate mothers, the spouse and her children distance themselves from her after she returns home following the birth of the baby," CSR director Dr Ranjana Kumari said. In Anand, around 52 per cent of the surrogate mothers said they were abandoned by their husbands and that most of them had to fend for themselves and their children. Around 14 per cent women in Surat and 20 per cent in Jamnagar said their relationship with their husbands soured. Many surrogate mothers - 100 per cent in Jamnagar, 83 per cent in Surat and 40 per cent in Anand - revealed that they lost contact with friends and members of the family after opting for surrogacy.

I can't find the original report but presumably it'll be somewhere on here if anyone has time to search for it.

"I wont let my western sensibilities blind me to the fact that people in other parts of the world have to get by with a lot less and often without the things we take for granted here"

I also don't think Westerners are necessarily happier for having more things. When I went to India they seemd to be the most happiest people I've ever encountered.

I just read this (in the library) - no problem with the debate being out in the open but repulsed by the couple and what they are doing. My observation of people like this is they live in a middle class bubble and think money will solve the problem. Vile!

My main question is why on earth this couple have published ther story, unless perhaps to offset the £20k?

If I were considering entering into an arrangement of this kind the very last thing I would do is talk to a Daily Mail reporter. This is a publication that never, ever presents couples or women with fertility issues in a good light.

I'm not certain, but I think if I were as desperate for a baby as Octavia, i dont think i would want or need to know her. That's to say beyond wanting to ensure that the lady who is my surrogate is healthy, properly cared for during and after the pregnancy and properly renumerated for her service. What possible use could that be to either Octavian or the surrogate?

As to the ethics. Well I wouldn't condemn a British lady for acting as a surrogate. I've often thought its a shame they don't make more than their expenses. If the Orchards had used a Western surrogate would we disagree with her attitude less? In the US surrogates can make a healthy financial return on their service, why should an Indian lady be considered to have less of a financial interest in return for her service.

You don't think the Uk fertility industry is every bit as dodgy and money-making as the Indian one?

Infertility makes you stoop to desperate measures. I don't have a problem with what this couple did and, if I was in their shoes, I would also keep an emotional detachment from the surrogate.

Well American women living below the poverty line are apparently not allowed to act as surrogates (quite how that is policed I have no idea).

The Centre for Social Research study found that only 1-2& of surrogates in India had a copy of the contract (of course they may have been illiterate making it pointless anyway). And American surrogates do not live away from their families. Of course there are some advantages to the Indian mothers in living away from their families - for starters to keep their pregnancy secret from their disapproving local community - although that's an 'advantage' that raises its own ethical issues. The report from the Centre for Social Research also suggests that the poor education of the surrogates means they're not always aware of whether they have been fully paid. I'm pretty sure most American surrogates would be less vulnerable to exploitation.

You don't think the Uk fertility industry is every bit as dodgy and money-making as the Indian one?

No, because there is legislation. And women acting as surrogates in the UK are at least literate. I'm sure it's dodgy and money making in its own way, but from the little I've read this morning I think India outdoes it on the potential for exploitation.

Saintly take your point on the UK legislation. But have you honestly ever read one of these stories and not thought "I'm betting a big fat cheque changed hands as well as those expenses"?

A family friend works with women in India who have escaped residential clinics where they were intended surrogates, or had been and were being kept on to be used again. Their wombs were being pimped and some had been more conventionally pimped at the same time too. They weren't seeing life changing money.

Hmm enjoy - for me the issue isn't around the payments though. It's pretty clear from all the articles I have linked to above that the people who gain the least and often lose the most are the surrogates.

I don't think the UK surrogates risk isolation from their communities or abandonment from their husbands, and I suspect they would notice if an agreed cheque (whether for expenses or a dodgy payment) wasn't handed over. If they haemorrhage post birth they will be treated there and then (seemingly not the case in India).

The opportunity for exploitation is far higher in India than here.

The way that article is written is dreadful, there is no way a spin hasn't been put on it to fulfil an agenda.

I don't think what the couple are doing is wrong, I think it's the clinic that facilitates this that is wrong. If the surrogate is being exploited, then so are the infertile couples who are desparate to have a child.

Both the surrogate and the couple have options, although none of them desireable, and they have chosen this route. We cannot control what other countries decide to legislate for and against, but the UK could choose to sort out its own legislation to protect the infertile in this country and the poor in other countries being exploited, by making surrogacy a valid option for those here.

In the UK you take out life insurance for the surrogate or I should say, you pay for life insurance so the family are left financially secure.

I think - and my cultural background gives me an extremely good idea of the situation the surrogate is in- that the surrogate is not getting most of the money. She may receive only half of it. Or less. That is however a large sum for her and yes, she has entered into a business transaction.
It is highly likely that the DM has sensationalised this, but if the truth is anything like what has been portrayed, considering this woman a mere receptacle etc and all the patronising remarks about her are quite disgusting.
I support surrogacy where people from both ends enter into it of their own free will.
This couple could have exercised better judgment if they really had wanted to encourage surrogacy and chosen a paper other than the DM.
A degree of empathy for the mother and the pain and sense of loss she is likely to feel plus all the physical discomfort would not go amiss either.
My experiences would not be the same or even similar to this surrogate's either, but that doesn't mean I can't give her the empathy one owes a human being. Hiding under a stupid blanket of "she is so different from us and we are entitled prats from a first world country" is shite.
Just as the surrogate - were she say to lose the baby- would be a human being if she felt bad for the couple losing their hold because they had wanted it so badly.
It's called being human.

"losing their baby" not "losing their hold"!! Autocorrect aarrgh

I agree with what Maryz said. If the surrogate is happy with the deal and not coerced into it I dont see the problem. Exploitation? Well its not ideal but if thats the best/easiest way for her to make money for her family then thats her choice. Hell a lot of the minimum wage workers in the uk could be seen to be exploited.

That doesn't mean you have to abjure all human empathy.

Why couldn´t they have used a UK surrogate?

Another reason why people don't use surrogates in the Uk is because there is nothing in place to protect them.

If the surrogate changes her mind after giving birth (even though she may have no genetic link to the child) then the law will back her and in all likelihood she will be permitted to keep the child.