KOKILA, a young but weatherbeaten mother, reclines in a swivel chair, laughing at a silly question. How hard is her work as a surrogate seven months pregnant with another woman’s child? “It’s relaxing,” Kokila says in a mix of Gujarati and Hindi, “Much easier than working the fields.” As a manual labourer, she is used to earning 100 rupees a day ($1.50). She stands to earn 450,000 rupees at the end of her months spent chatting with other expectant surrogates.
Upstairs, in another part of the clinic, Bharti Dali and her husband speak of their joy at meeting their second daughter ten days ago, thanks to another surrogate staying at the clinic. They named her Saina, just like their first daughter, who died in a car accident at the age of 18. They regard the new Saina as a miracle. What both Saina’s parents and Kokila have done, however, would be illegal under a new draft law, unveiled on August 24th, which would ban paid surrogacy entirely.
Commercial surrogacy came to India in 2002 and went transnational within a year, when a British couple “commissioned” a pregnancy. Fertility clinics...Continue reading
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