Moms for Rent
Humiliating practice for women or a way to fight decreasing fertility?
Photo by Bruno Zanzottera
Anand is an Indian town whose name means happiness. In the last few years, it has become the Indian capital city of rental mothers: that is since 2006, when Dr. Nayna Patel, a gynecologist, founded the Akanksha Infertility Clinic, which has been dubbed “the greatest wish clinic”. The idea came to Dr. Patel when the mother of one of her patients, a sterile young lady, volunteered to carry the pregnancy to term instead of her daughter. Patel thought it might be a good idea to combine the desire to have a child for many infertile couples with the need for money of poor women who rent their womb for a few thousand dollars, which can pay for the studies of their children or buy a house or open a business.
Only 15 countries in the world allow the implantation of embryos in a volunteer woman, but most do not accept that this is done in return for payment. India permits it, and this is why these days couples come to Anand from all over the world in order to have a child they cannot get naturale. To critics who accuse Dr. Nayna Patel of having created an outrageous exploitation of the female body and having turned children into merchandise, she replies resolutely: “We free women from poverty, while giving other women the opportunity to experience the joy of being a mother. Human beings were created for two main reasons, survival and procreation. And to those who mention ethical-religious issues, I say that Krishna, whose mother gave him in custody to the wife of a shepherd, can be considered as the first god born from a rental mother”.
(2014)
