* “Dear Doctor Banker, I am Lucy from UK. I and my husband wish to have our own children and are even medically fit, but I want to avoid the hassles of pregnancy. I don’t want to gain weight or stay away from my work for a long time. Could help us find a surrogate mother in India who will be willing to carry our baby?”
* “Dear Doctor Nayna Patel, I am Danny from UK. My girlfriend is a model, and doesn’t want to make any compromise on the career front by getting pregnant. But we both wish to have our own kids. Can you help us have kids by arranging for a surrogate mother?”
These are not excerpts from fiction, but a few lines from the emails received by In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) surrogacy experts in Ahmedabad and Anand. These mails, in fact, throw light on the shocking trend among working women in foreign countries. There are women willing to sacrifice the joy of motherhood just to save their career.
For most surrogate mothers, who come from lower-middle class families, the move is only a means to earn more money. But IVF experts are appalled too see that urban working women are opting for surrogacy just to avoid a layer of flab or for the sake of their career.
“I was shocked to read the mail. Lucy had written that she did not want to suffer the pregnancy pangs. She said she would give me eggs and sperms and I should give them babies,” said Dr Manish Banker, MD and director of Pulse Women’s Hospital in Ahmedabad. “Lucy sounded so cruelly practical. She also said that she wanted to have triplets to avoid having to undergo the entire procedure once again,” Dr Banker added.
Experts have, however, said that they do not entertain such cases as it is against medical ethics. “If a woman does not have medical condition that reduces the chances of conceiving a baby we discourage them to opt for surrogacy,” said Dr Banker. Dr Nayna Patel, an IVF surrogacy expert from Anand who pioneered the concept, agreed. She is against parents who get surrogate mothers to carry their child despite being medically fit. “If a woman cannot carry her own child in her womb can she be responsible enough to raise the child?” she said.
