âAt a clinic in Anand in northern India, women give birth to Western children. White womenâs eggs are inseminated with white menâs sperm, and the embryo is implanted in the wombs of Indian women. The children will show no traces of the women who bore them. They will neither bear her name nor get to know her. After giving birth to the children, the Indian women surrender them. They sign a contract and receive between 2,500 and 6,500 USD the moment they give up their responsibility for the child they just gave birth to. For the women, most of whom are poor and from nearby villages, the payment can be up to the equivalent of ten yearsâ salary. The buyers are typically American, European, Australian, Japanese, or wealthy Indians; they are childless heterosexual couples, homosexual men, and single men⊠With traditional surrogacy, the industry had been limited to the Western world. An Indian mother would have meant a child with Indian features. But suddenly, through the miracle of modern technology, it became possible for an Indian woman to give birth to a white child. Thus, Americans could pay two-thirds less than for surrogacy in the USA and still come home with their âownâ child, even though it had spent nine months in an Indian womanâs body. Embryo transplantation also impacted on American courtsâ judgments in the child custody cases. In one case from 1993, almost identical to âBaby Mââthe mother had second thoughts after the birth and wanted to keep the childâthe judgment was that she was not the childâs mother. She âwas not exercising procreative choice, but was providing a service.â Because the egg wasnât hers, the pregnancy wasnât motherhood but a âserviceâ; therefore, she had no rights to the child she gave birth to. This has now become standard practice in the USA, and even when the egg belongs to a third womanâa so-called egg donorâcustody is granted to those who paid for the child.â
â Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self
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