Shirley Temper

The Switzers, awaiting twins, found India to be a cheap, secure alternative

This makes me sick.

I find this article deeply upsetting. The questions that kept occurring to me as I read it was: is there no end to Western narcissism? Does our fetishization of fertility and parenting know no bounds? Is nothing sacrosanct from the long arm of US capitalism?

The pursuit of these American women to have biological children past their fertility window is yet another symptom of our society in which we all live like perpetual adolescents, unable to accept that unfortunately, there are simply things in our lives which we will want but will not have. We cannot accept that if we make choices in our 20s and 30s to not have children, we may not be able to have biological children afterwards. Rather, we are a deeply consumerist society, in which even a womb can be purchased, and now, at a bargain rate! Each case of infertility is considered a catastrophic tragedy, not a part of life, which is often hard and unfair. Can Americans, more and more myopically narcissistic, simply not accept a life with consequences? A life in which there exist problems, the solutions of which cannot be purchased with greenbacks?
Have any of these women considered adopting a child born into less fortunate circumstances?
The discussion in this article is shallow regarding the very real dangers these Indian women face without the legal and medical protection, nor the emotional support offered to surrogates in the US. There is little if any concern about their emotional welfare and future physical health that may be affected by carrying additional children, often in quick succession. There is no discussion of the fact that these women face potentially real and very dangerous medical complications during pregnancy, nor is there any study about the long-term emotional and medical effects of repeated surrogacy. The fact that American women are paying minimally for the womb-rental is skirted, but the reality is, these Indian women are being sought out with the same type of thinking that might cause this same American woman to buy a dishwasher at Sears rather than Lowes. The motive here in choosing India is purely capitalistic.

The American women who exploit these third world women can comfort themselves all they want with antiquated, Orientalist notions of India.

Sadly but unsurprisingly, and in the spirit of trendy, Angelina Jolie paternalism towards the third world, these American women speak of the spiritual side of having children born in India, and their token gifts of toys and clothes for these women is held up as a sign of goodwill, of the global bonds of sisterhood. Rather, this attitude and the money and other material returns earned by Indian women for surrogacy should be viewed as yet another example of the American idea that any sin can be forgiven, and problem solved, if enough money is thrown at the problem.

The idea of American "medical tourism" in India is laughable and ironic.
These women, while not agents of US government, are its subjects; the very government whose protection of corporate pharmaceutical companies and their patents have caused the premature, medically un-aided deaths of thousands of Indians and other third world citizens.
That one of Americans hugged her surrogate was written about as if it were a sign of Western ideas of equality shaking off the shackles of the Indian caste system. To the contrary, it is precisely the Indian caste system, not to mention the global one, in which millions are locked into poverty, which allows cheap surrogacy in the first place.
What next? Indian hair is already harvested for most of the world’s wigs.
Should we also ask that organs are harvested? After all, us Americans can smile and answer reassuringly, "we’ll pay, of course!" $5,000 for a kidney?
$10,000 for a heart? An HD TV for a lung? We can console ourselves knowing its more than these poor villagers will make in a year otherwise, and after all, we too will face hardships, like the mosquitoes and heat that one American complained of in the article.

The plight of these Indian women is truly and profoundly deplorable. At the bottom rungs of Indian society, they work hard and long for little. Then they carry white women’s babies, which are removed from their bodies for what is—in anywhere other than the 3rd world—very little money. Then they are asked not to complain, after all, they received a handsome sum. Violated once by Indian society, they are violated again by the endless greed and limitless sense of entitlement of Western society, and then asked to say thank you for the favor.