“….Commercial surrogacy was legalized in India in 2002, and it is now estimated to be a $445 million business. Griebe and Fister say they’ve spent around $40,000 on the surrogacy process so far; according to Samson, $8,000 of that goes directly to the surrogate mother. That may seem high, but Griebe said that friends of theirs who are attempting to use an American surrogate “are two years into this and still no baby, not even a miscarriage, and they’re already over $100,000. Every time they try, they have to pay.”

Samson’s agency is one of the few to specifically target gay couples. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in India in July; even though it was rarely prosecuted, it was still a social taboo until a few years ago, says Dr. Samit Sekhar, the embryologist at the Kiran Infertility Centre in Hyderabad, which works with Samson’s agency. “For us, it doesn’t make any difference,” he says of the couple’s sexual orientation. However, the surrogate “doesn’t know if she’s carrying for a gay couple or not.” He said that Kiran has delivered 24 babies via surrogates, with around nine of those going to gay couples.

“A year ago, I would have said it was very difficult to recruit a surrogate,” says Sekhar. “Now it is becoming much more open. They get a decent amount of money. They get free food, free boarding, and free clothes, and they are housed in a nice place” for 12 months, away from their families.

Sakhar says that Kiran can house up to 50 surrogates at a time. “They stay at the clinic. The non-pregnant surrogates are housed in an apartment,” he says. “There are two midwives who stay in the clinic 24 hours a day, who take care of food, clothing, medication and all that.”

Of course, using Indian surrogates raises ethical issues. An article in a recent issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics called into question some of the assertions by clinic operators and surrogacy agencies regarding the women who are surrogates. The practice of keeping the women at the clinic, ostensibly to oversee their health and welfare, can also be interpreted as keeping them held hostage, since they’re not allowed to leave the grounds of the clinic. The surrogates are often poor and illiterate, raising questions about how much they understand about the contract they’re signing—including what happens if they have health complications or have to terminate the pregnancy because of their own health concerns. There are also questions about what would happen if the parents decided they didn’t want the baby.

But Samson implies that it’s difficult for Westerners to understand the way that the money the surrogates get changes their lives—and how it would be nearly impossible for them to earn as much money in such a short amount of time doing anything else. “An engineer would earn the same amount in the same amount of time,” he says. “They are happy with the money. It opens up a lot of windows for them at the same time. They can now lead a comfortable life, according to Indian standards at least. They can invest the money in a business, buy a small property. They can send kids to school or college.”

Fister plans on being in India for the baby’s birth; he’s anticipating that he’ll have to stay there for about three weeks after the baby is born, during which time he’ll submit to a DNA test to prove he’s the father and get a birth certificate issued by the American Embassy. “People think you’re doing it in India because it’s less expensive,” says Fister, “but the main reason we went to India is because of the legal issues. Here, there would always be the chance of the mother coming back and saying, I’d like to have visitation. Over there they can actually have it legalized.”

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