Commercial Surrogacy Grows in India
By Stephanie M. Lee,
San Francisco Chronicle
| 10. 20. 2012
They never wanted to have a child, until they did. And then they couldn't.
For four years, this San Carlos couple struggled with infertility. Now, their child is growing inside a woman they have never met, in India, a country they have never seen.
This is the story of Jennifer Benito-Kowalski, 39, and Steve Kowalski, 40, who are trying to start a family 8,200 miles from the Bay Area.
It is also the story of a developing nation where hundreds of women, for a price, are opening their wombs to fulfill the dreams of aspiring parents around the world.
Commercial surrogacy became legal in India a decade ago in an effort to stimulate medical tourism, the emerging practice of travel across international borders to obtain cheaper health care. The Confederation of Indian Industry estimates the market will generate $2.3 billion this year.
Surrogacy is rapidly growing in popularity, as couples from the United States and other countries, desperate to have a child, turn to India. No national registry exists, but conservative estimates suggest that the annual number of...
Related Articles
By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024
An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.
The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...