Personal Response

“The Akanksha clinic is at the forefront of India’s booming trade in so-called reproductive tourism — foreigners coming to the country for infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. The clinic’s main draw, however, is its success using local women to have foreigners’ babies. Surrogacy costs about $12,000 in India, including all medical expenses and the surrogate’s fee. In the U.S., the same procedure can cost up to $70,000.”


A surrogate mother is a woman who carries a fetus for someone else, usually a couple having fertility issues. Once the child born it is given to the people who has hired her. Usually the precedent involves in vitro fertilization and then the egg is implanted into the surrogate. According to the article we read at class, in India only the couples that really needs a surrogate mother are accepted. A woman that doesn't want to carry a baby because her body will change aren't accepted. Usually couples go to India because of money issues. In the United States is more than five times the of India.
¿Is this a new kind of slavery? The fragment says it's many times cheaper to do it in India than USA, so for instance everyone will think about exploitation on the women that accept this job. I believe that the term "reproductive tourism" is not correctly applied. In first term, you don't go to vacations and it's a hard decision for both, the biological parents and the surrogate mother, to choose this path. First of all, the Indian mother will have to give that baby she carried for nine months. Also, the woman hiring the service will have to leave the baby in the hands of a stranger. But the rewards given are worth. The couple will actually be able to have a baby, even though it's not the same experience, and will go against ethics, using the body of another woman to have babies. ¿A factory? Not really, surrogates earn a huge amount of money. They have also got other families to dress, educate and feed, and surrogacy is an opportunity to have a better life. In synthesis, this procedure is giving a chance of rebuilding the life to surrogate mothers and to couples struggling with infertility issues. I believe that if both sides are willing to take the procedure they are free to do it.