Surrogacy: Children of Dreams, Parents of Means

Since gestational surrogacy was legalized in 2002, it has become one of the fastest growing industries in India’s rapidly developing economy. A recent World Bank report projected that by 2020 India’s surrogacy enterprise will reach $2.5 billion. In just over a decade, more than 500 surrogacy clinics have cropped up throughout the country, all eager to supply infertile western couples with the child of their dreams—for a price.

In The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy is Transforming the American Family, Leslie Morgan Steiner chronicles Rhonda and Gerry Wile’s four-year journey to conceive via surrogacy. Their story involves an egg donor, two gestational surrogates, four trips to Mumbai, a host of doctors, and over $35,000 to yield their three kids. What is left untold are the many hidden costs of surrogacy, both for the children conceived through this method and for the vulnerable women who participate in the practice.  (more...)

Surrogacy: Children of Dreams, Parents of Means