More than a decade ago (2002), I had watched a Bollywood movie, dealing with a subject
that was quite revolutionary and path breaking at that time:
surrogate motherhood. The film was about a married couple, who found
that they can never have a baby because the lady could not carry the
fetus during pregnancy and how her best friend agreed to become a
surrogate mother.
Today,
surrogacy has not remained a taboo any more and there are fertility
clinics in India that offer this service commonly. Many married women
with children, agree to carry someone else's fetus for full 9 months
to be able to earn a substantial chunk of money that awaits them,
when the baby is delivered and which can help in their own children's
education or meet some other expenditures. I do not want to discuss
here ethics or propriety of surrogacy, because it is now socially
accepted and considering the facts that many childless couples can
finally find a new joy in their lives and the baby is genetically
theirs, there could hardly be any moral objection to it.
However,
there are many unfortunate couples, for whom even surrogacy can not
help, because the woman is unable to produce an egg that can be
impregnated in a petri dish. If such a couple wants to have a baby,
they do not need surrogate mothers, but female egg donors. In such
cases, many other issues crop up. All parents want their children to
look like themselves. For this reason, Japanese or European couples
may not accept an Indian egg donor even though in these affluent
countries, it is rather difficult to find an egg donor. However, as
far as Europe is concerned, they have found a new source plentyful of
egg donors, after the Spanish economic disaster. Spain has become a
new destination for women and couples seeking to become pregnant
through in vitro fertilization in recent years, because egg donors
are plentiful.
I
recently read about the case of a Spanish woman, Mónica Campos, a 34
year old Spanish lady, who has long, dyed-blonde hair. She worked for
a time as a model while still in high school, but was a happily
married woman till the real-estate crisis hit Spain. Spain's
construction industry was collapsing and Campos' husband Eduardo, had
to give up his business selling used luxury cars as his customer base
dried up. Soon, the couple was no longer able to afford their monthly
mortgage payment on a house with a garden in Maçanet de la Selva.
The bank was threatening to foreclose and Campos could already
picture herself on the street, with a four-year-old and an infant.
It is
then, when Monica heard about fertility clinics and approached a
private clinic for reproductive medicine in Granollers, near
Barcelona, and decided to become an egg donor. For each donation
cycle, Campos received just under €1,000 as compensation for both
her time and the inconvenience. Despite a legal limit of six
donations, Campos had her eggs harvested 14 times in just under two
years. She earned around €10,000, exploiting her body to keep her
family from plunging into poverty. Since both she and her husband
were self-employed, neither of them could claim unemployment
benefits. Only after a year, did they start receiving a family
allowance of €640 a month. She had saved the family from financial
ruin.
Egg
donation is a cumbersome and time consuming medical procedure. It
takes place anonymously, and a maximum of six children can be born
from eggs donated by any one woman. The donor has to go through
check-up at the clinic, where a minimum of 10 appointments are
necessary. Potential donors are tested for hereditary diseases and
possible genetic defects; they have blood drawn, receive an
electrocardiogram and undergo a psychological evaluation. If found
acceptable, donors have to take daily hormone injections in the
abdomen for two weeks to stimulate ovaries and produce more eggs.
Once
Monica realized that egg donation was an easy way out to earn money,
she started approaching other clinics in Barcelona or the surrounding
area as soon as she could, ready to donate again and keep her source
of income. She never told the doctors about her previous donations.
On the contrary she pretended to be philanthropic and told the
doctors that she was motivated by a desire to help infertile women
conceive. She never said that she is doing this only for money.
Mónica
Campos donated eggs regularly for two years, until her ovaries could
no longer produce any more eggs. She even tried injecting herself
with the highest possible hormone dose. The result was that her
abdomen swelled, but her body didn't produce any more eggs. After an
ultrasound check, she received the final payment of €300 and that
was the end of her egg donations and the income out of it. Yet
greater health problems awaited her. Three years after her final
course of hormones, Campos' gynecologist diagnosed her with
abnormally enlarged ovaries. She experiences chronic pain, not only
in her abdomen, and in 2010 was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a
condition that makes every movement an agony. She has been medically
certified as 51 percent disabled. She barely eats anymore, trying to
lose the weight she has gained.
Her
husband still remains unemployed. Her illness makes her irritable and
her marriage is barely holding up under the strain. Since Monica is
51 percent disabled, she can not claim disability allowance , which
requires at least 65% disability. The only right spot for the couple
is that they have obtained a two-year debt moratorium and will be
able to keep living in their house for at least that long.
The
really tragic part of this story is that in spite of all the
troubles, she has undergone, Mónica Campos, for her part, is now
considering hiring herself out as a surrogate mother. Surrogacy is
banned in Spain, but couples in the United States will pay up to
$150,000. She says: ."If a rich couple provides me with a place
to live, I'll carry their baby.”
Monica's
case demonstrates that egg donation can be real harmful if done on
regular basis. Similar is the case with surrogacy. In India,
fertility clinics say that them limit surrogate pregnancies to two
times for a woman. However what happens on ground and the health
problems that face surrogate mothers are not accurately recorded. In
short, parenthood can not be offered for sale as a business and can
not be considered as a means of earning money. It has to be a
philanthropic endevour. The major responsibility here is of the
fertility clinics, who consider this as part of their business, as
poor women are likely to get attracted by the easy money.
25 May
2013
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