Many foreigners are visiting India in search of surrogate wombs. 25,000 couples visit India for surrogacy services, resulting in more than 2,000 births. It is now home to approximately 1,000 surrogacy centres. It is now an estimated $2.3bn business. The majority of clients are international, but a proportion is also from India. Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and his wife Kiran Rao decided to have a child using a surrogate mother.
Indian women typically rent their wombs for between $16,000 and $32,000. Indian poverty remains widespread despite being the world's ninth-largest economy. The national annual income averaging $1,527 per person, and 29.8 percent of the population living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
Neelima, a 30-year-old mother, decided to rent her womb after her husband's family took out a 300,000-rupee ($5,450) loan for her sister-in-law's wedding. Her husband, who works as a security guard, found it difficult to repay with his meagre salary. She gave birth to a baby girl for an Australian couple.
Olga van den Akker, a professor of health psychology at Middlesex University's Hendon campus, is worried about the "increasing exploitation of poor women who undergo pregnancies to earn money".
And Wesley J Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Centre on Human Exceptionalism, calls surrogacy "biological colonialism", adding that it was worse than other types of colonialism.
"Earlier, men and women were made bonded labourers but now even wombs are being made to do bonded labour," said one professor from Chandigarh, who did not want to be named. While surrogacy may help infertile couples to have children, "the way women are dragged into this profession" is exploitative, said the professor.
Indian women typically rent their wombs for between $16,000 and $32,000. Indian poverty remains widespread despite being the world's ninth-largest economy. The national annual income averaging $1,527 per person, and 29.8 percent of the population living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
Neelima, a 30-year-old mother, decided to rent her womb after her husband's family took out a 300,000-rupee ($5,450) loan for her sister-in-law's wedding. Her husband, who works as a security guard, found it difficult to repay with his meagre salary. She gave birth to a baby girl for an Australian couple.
Olga van den Akker, a professor of health psychology at Middlesex University's Hendon campus, is worried about the "increasing exploitation of poor women who undergo pregnancies to earn money".
And Wesley J Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Centre on Human Exceptionalism, calls surrogacy "biological colonialism", adding that it was worse than other types of colonialism.
"Earlier, men and women were made bonded labourers but now even wombs are being made to do bonded labour," said one professor from Chandigarh, who did not want to be named. While surrogacy may help infertile couples to have children, "the way women are dragged into this profession" is exploitative, said the professor.
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