Foreign Tourists Flock India For Surrogate Mothers

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What a blessing to a country with good population of women in a land of diverse inhabitants. 'Mother' is the greatest treasure that a child possesses in his or her earthly life. Indian women are fortunate to give this light to the foreign tourists who are not able to bear children. Hiring surrogate mothers was legalized in 2002 by the government of India to promote medical tourism, and is expected to generate 2.3 billion dollar each year by 2012.

The cost for foreigners goes to 23,000 dollars about one-fifth of the rates in US, out of which the mother is paid around 7,500 dollars in installments.

On the other hand, there are some complications as there are several countries that deny visas to such children because surrogacy is not legalized as means of parenthood. One of the incidents occurred with twin toddlers Nicholas and Leonard Balaz whose surrogate mom is an Indian woman from Gujarat and parents were German nationals. This is due to lack of systematic guidelines written by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) contributing a major problem.

Dr. Nayna Patel who runs a surrogate clinic in Gujarat expressed “We are lost when there are no laws, but the people drafting the bill have to remember to take care of the clinics, too." Realizing these hitches, the Indian Government is trying its best to pass a bill banning IVF clinics from arranging surrogacy transactions and calling for the establishment of an “ART bank" that would locate surrogate moms and reproductive donors.

Though this plan may not be a welcoming sight for the medical fraternity, it will solve the problems of the parents as well as children.

This art bank will open up a new door for the foreigners to bring the child into their own country and also set an age, 35 and below to be surrogate mothers. It also restricts the mother to surrogate only five times.