WUNRN
Centre for Social Research - New
Delhi, India
DIrect Link to Full 88-Page Research
Report:
This unique
research study provides a nuanced analysis of the motivations, experiences and
consequences of surrogacy in Anand, Surat and Jamnagar in the state of Gujarat
of India. The study focuses on the reasons for the woman’s decision to become a
surrogate mother and for commissioning parents to opt for surrogacy. It
provides a retrospective view of the relationship between commissioning parents
and surrogate mother before the pregnancy, during the pregnancy, and after the
birth. Furthermore, the study analyses societal response to the commissioning
parents’ decision to opt for a surrogacy service and the surrogate mother’s
decision to provide a service.
The research
study was conducted in three of the most prominent areas of Gujarat state
(Anand, Surat, Jamnagar), where one can find the most famous clinics providing
surrogacy arrangements. The sample size consisted of one hundred surrogate
mothers and fifty commissioning parents and their families in three cities of
Gujarat. The methodology, adopted for the study, was exploratory research using
both qualitative and quantitative research tools, such as the situation
analysis, the informal investigation, survey analysis and questionnaires.
The research
findings indicate that in the absence of a concrete law regarding surrogacy
arrangement all the three parties involved i.e. the surrogate mother, the
commissioning parents and the child are subjected to the whims and caprices of
handful of infertility physicians who gained the most out of this arrangement.
The unfavorable socio-economic conditions make the surrogate mothers
financially vulnerable to search for extra income. There is very little
interaction between the surrogate mother and intended parents, who in their
desperation to beget a child do not question the clinics’ dealings with their
surrogate mother. The research reveals that it does not seem to be a problem
for intended parents to acquire a baby through surrogacy arrangements, whereas
the surrogate mother sometimes has to pay a high cost of exclusion by her
family members and society. Last but not the least the child born through surrogacy
arrangement also at times has to suffer due to the crisis regarding citizenship
issue, divorce of intending parents or physical abnormalities. Hence, the study
strongly recommends certain policy formulation for surrogacy arrangement with
the enactment of a concrete law.