WITNESSES FROM AN AMERICAN WOMAN
I have been a surrogate mother three times (twins
in February 2007 and a little boy in June 2008), and I’m about to give birth
this month to my fourth surrogate baby. The best part is knowing you did this
for the right reasons when you deliver the baby and the parents finally see him
or her. But there are a lot of sacrifices a surrogate makes. There are hormone
shots that my husband had to help me take for three months, prior to the
transfer and then almost through the first trimester. With varying state laws
on surrogacy, you may have to stay in state. My husband had to turn down a
promotion in another state, and I missed Christmas with my in-laws during my
3rd trimester with twins because my doctor said I couldn’t travel.
[As for handing the baby off]
I knew instinctively that I’m not an attached type of person. I always viewed
surrogacy as a long babysitting project. I’m going to give birth any day now
and I’m excited that the parents will be there. It’s not sad for me at all. I
have no regrets whatsoever – I’m just glad I was able to participate. We’re not
rich people. We’ll never donate a wing of a hospital, but it’s one way our
family can give back to our world in a really big way. Without our assistance,
there would be four less children in the world. We are showing our own children
how to be generous and how to sacrifice for others.
THE SITUATION OF AN INDIAN WOMAN
Kalpita bore three children in
two surrogate pregnancies, but she has only one photograph to show for it. It
hangs on the wall of the narrow room she shared with her husband and three
teenage daughters. In the photograph, taken in 2009, she stands between two
handsome men with Mediterranean complexions, her head just reaching their broad
shoulders. She told me the men were brothers. They were probably a gay couple,
but the women I interviewed never acknowledged that their clients might be gay.
(Gay sex is illegal in India, and homosexuality is often not a visible part of
community life.)
For these men, Kalpita had
carried twin boys. She was paid 2.75 lakh rupees (£2,840), in 2009. It wasn’t
nearly enough money, she said, for such dangerous work, “delivering two babies,
putting our life in risk”. But Puranik, who arranged the pregnancy, set a fixed
rate, and the clients spoke neither Hindi nor Marathi, the languages Kalpita
knows. They had left no phone number. Kalpita did not know where they came
from, or where they went. What the photograph failed to show was that, in this
deal, Kalpita could not negotiate or speak for herself, even as her clients
stood smiling by her side. “They did not ask us how much we had been given, or
what happened,” said Kalpita. “They never asked.”
Beautiful and worth reading article on the various situation of women. Its brilliant piece of writing showing two different conditions of women in two different parts of world. Powerful words!
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