Pregnancy as a Service - Baby as a Product

Yes, I want to talk about Surrogacy! (Surrogacy is a method in which a women will carry a child to term and hand the baby over to the commissioning parents a few moments after birth.) Shocking? Surprising? Or interesting? Read on!! Science has advanced!!!

Surrogacy challenges my fundamental understanding of Motherhood and brings in a question of what I always thought as an unbreakable bond between mother and child. While many condemn this, some compares it with women who rent their bodies (prostitution – the world’s oldest profession) or the organ transplant (after people die). I am not going to talk about those who have their babies by surrogate to avoid stretch marks or lose the waxes in their body parts! But I will try and talk about those mothers who rent their wombs - they need money and the couples who commission it - they have money and infertile. This practice is seen in many major countries with the deal done domestically and/or internationally (outsource for a cheaper cost). Money is THE constant need for many in the world, isn't it? Few governments have legalized this practice with clinics and medicos specialized in this, they also do baby-brokering. Interesting to know that homosexuals too are customers of this trade, of course partnered with a sperm/egg donors.

Very little is understood about the world of surrogates. I've read about their stories and it seems to me that they like to be involved, though it is primarily for money, but they also enjoy the feel of their bellies with a baby inside and the high of all those rushing hormones. Defying stereotyping, hah? The hardest part of this job could be the loneliness that come after the deal is done. The mothers come home without the baby they were carrying and there’s no one to ask, no calls, nothing. The performance is over, nobody cares, they’re done. They’re out!! All they have is the surrogacy money and the livid C-section mark.

Is it all about activism against infertility-as-a-curse or the demand for money in everything in day-to-day lives? People explore different options to get out of the prisoning the society has put on them. Who is to be condemned?

Wet Nurse, Babysitting, Surrogacy, then what?