Making Babies

House of Surrogates is a newly-produced BBC documentary. It tells the story of a very sharp Indian businesswoman. Preparing to build the world's first "baby factory". Dr. Nayna Patel, clearly a first-rate entrepreneur as well as a practising physician, saw a business opportunity. One which would benefit her hugely through an increase in income, while employing impoverished Indian women willing to lend their bodies to a new enterprise.

It is not prostitution, after all, a somewhat older profession that women often turned to for is earning power. This business represents is a legitimate business opportunity which is meant to service the parenthood aspirations of monied Westerners. While responding to the earning needs of women who see the exchange as one beneficial to themselves.

Dr. Patel has already acquired a certain level of expertise in her new calling. She operates the Akanksha clinic, capable of accommodating roughly one hundred pregnant women within a single building. Now that's ambitious. But not quite as ambitious as the new project at hand. Which is the construction, currently underway, of her new clinic complete with apartments for visiting Western couples, a living-arrangement floor for the surrogate mothers, along with administrative offices, delivery rooms, an IVF department, restaurant and gift shop.

"According to many, I am controversial. There have been allegations of baby selling, baby-making factory. The surrogates are doing the physical work agreed, and they are being compensated for it.
"These women know there is no gain without pain. I definitely see myself as a feminist. Surrogacy is one woman helping another."

Dr Nayna Patel (front centre) has delivered hundreds of babies in the last decade

Through her business acumen and professional acuity, Dr. Patel has produced close to six hundred babies in the decade in which her business has been in practise. During that time she has received not only a very good income and the satisfaction that accompanies aiding childless couples achieve their dream, along with helping poor Indian women support their families, but also death threats. That goes along with accusations of exploiting the poor for profit.

A British doctor with his wife sought the assistance of Dr. Patel. The woman was born with one Fallopian tube and one ovary, incapable of biologically carrying a child naturally. "My last chance of trying to have my own child is to use a surrogate", she said. "The embryos for me are already alive, they are waiting for that moment where they can grow and be taken out and say 'Hello mommy'. It's like my whole future starts today, right now."

Her husband, himself a doctor, approves of the clinic; professional and sterile, no different from what he is accustomed to using in Britain. In the documentary, Dr. Patel is shown praying, placing embryos within the uterus of a surrogate. A blood test expected to be performed in two weeks' time will reveal if a pregnancy will ensue from that procedure.

One surrogate is expecting twins for an American couple. The money she will receive will enable her to buy a house for her family. "Having twins means we get a bigger fee. Last time I was a surrogate I bought white goods, a car and lent some to my sister-in-law. This time I will buy a house", she said, with no little amount of well-deserved satisfaction.

The fact is, it is a worthwhile enterprise, as far as all those concerned with the transaction are concerned. The anxious would-be parents of a new baby that inherits their very own genes, albeit processed through in vitro fertility transplantation, will soon answer their dreams of having a family of their own. They had to pay for the privilege, but found the exchange more than worthwhile, to improve the quality of their lives.

Improving the quality of their own lives through selling the occupancy of their bodies for a finite period of time appealed in its own way to women who had their own responsibilities to attend to, taking a temporary leave of absence from their families to embark on this money-earning adventure that would eventually help them live the kind of lives they too yearned for.

And the initiative of one physician, skilled in the transference of the fertilized ovum into the biological receptacle of her employees, each of whom earn a minimum $8,000, still leaving her a profit of $10,000 after paying for operating costs expressing her capital expenses, and leaving her with a tidy profit, results in satisfaction all around.

Mother-to-be Vasanti and her husband Ashok were able to send their daughter Mansi to a well-thought-of English-speaking school as a result of the earning capabilities given them through surrogacy. The family lives in one room which they share with four additional family members, but they're planning to build a new house with the avails of surrogacy fees.

Vasanti and Ashok with their daughter