Commercial surrogacy: Mother not given her due

Commercial surrogacy creates a problem for the surrogate mother who is not given her due in terms of monetary benefits and also treatment in case of any health complications.

Ms Savitri (name changed), a mother of three children who opted for surrogacy in the wake of her husband’s financial crisis, said, “In the fourth pregnancy as a surrogate mother my body developed too many hormonal changes due to which I had a lot of problems throughout the pregnancy.”

“At the same time, the people were very particular and I was given high dosage of medicines as the health of the child in the womb should not be affected. Finally, it was a C-section though all my own children were born via normal birth. This added to a lot of health issues as after the operation I had to take proper rest, food and medicines to get back to normal life. These extra expenses were not borne by them.

The doctor didn’t charge her fees but medicines and the cost of traveling had to be borne by us, which were quite a bit.”