If I desire a product I’ll place an order for it, making the necessary payments, and after some given time that product will be delivered to me. There is nothing unusual in this scenario, but just imagine if this product is your own baby?

It’s not just a story, it is happening around us. Recently there was news of ‘Outsourced Pregnancies’ in India. An infertility clinic near Anand (Gujrat) is actually employing surrogate mothers from local community. They are kept in separate houses in groups, with maids and doctors, who take care of them during the pregnancy. They are treated and kept in best of facilities. After the birth, the baby is transferred to the possession of its biological parents. The surrogate mothers are supported for some time in terms of counseling.

These local women are earning more than what they would earn in a decade of their usual income and the offshore parents get a ready made baby of their own, with a high payment of course.

According to the reports there have been 40 such successful births and 50 more are pregnant.

But what kind of a family we are creating in this way? What would be the long term emotional and psychological impact of such a huge baby outsourcing? Isn’t it commercialization of birth? Doesn’t it prove again that ‘money can buy everything’? What about the issue of globalization? Aren’t richer counties passing on all their dirt to the less privileged one?

The issues are not just commercial and economic, but this type of trend will have a very long lasting effect on the way our societies are formed and on our family fiber too. The surrogate mothers are paying a high price in terms of their family bonding and their own baby desires; where as the actual parents are like paying a price for a baby, just as we do for any other product. What level of emotional attachment would they have for such a ready made costly product, is an issue to mull about. Both of these parties are working for their own profits, but what about the baby? That baby belongs to someone but has been created by someone else, in some corner of the world that he doesn’t even know. That baby inherits nothing from that mother of nine months but still he has been created in her womb!

These questions are valid for any in-vitro fertilization, but what when it has been commercialized? A few instances a year can be managed as exceptions but its dangerous when it becomes a trend. After all everything cannot be marketed. There has to be space for things that are special and too personal.

Via: Daily Mail and mLive