India’s ‘rent a womb’ industry is booming
For around Dh20,000, there are women in India who are willing to be surrogate mothers for couples hoping to have a child. Helen Roberts reports on the burgeoning womb on hire industry in India
- Additional inputs by Anand Raj
- Published: 00:00 September 14, 2012
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- Image Credit: Supplied picture
- Women at a surrogate house in Ahmedabad waiting to deliver.
Parvati Lal Bahadur Yep is eight months pregnant with twins. Dressed in a pink and white maternity gown the 30-year-old gently caresses her distended belly as she paces the sparsely decorated room of a house in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
Parvati is trying hard not to get too emotionally attached to the babies kicking inside her. She knows she’ll be giving them away less than an hour after they are born to a couple from South Africa she’s met just once. After all, they have paid her around Rs300,000 (Dh20,000) to carry the babies for them – an unimaginably huge amount compared to the Rs7,000 (Dh464) per month that her husband earns as a driver.
“I have my family – my three beautiful children – I don’t want any more. I’m not getting attached to these babies as I’ll be giving them away,’’ says Parvati, trying hard to mask the emotional bonds she fears she’ll develop with the unborn babies in the course of her ‘job’.
What has made Parvati sign up with an infertility clinic in Ahmedabad and give up nine months of her life with her family to stay in the home along with 60 other surrogate mothers is very clear – the money that she will get.
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