However what I found really controversial was the fact that the couple "insist they have no intention of meeting either surrogate". In addition the wife said in an interview with BBC:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"She's doing a job for us, how often do you communicate with your builder or your gardener?"
"She'll get paid…we don't need to see her. As long as she's healthy and delivers my babies healthily, she's done a job for us," says the wife.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This I think is very morally invalid and the wife is not taking into consideration the feelings or attachment that the surrogates may develop to the babies. Furthermore, it would be very unfair if there is some sort of discrimination or prejudice involved here.
Additionally having all 4 babies may, in the future, bring up complications in their care. The parents would need to take into consideration the financial problems they might face in supporting all 4 babies.
Lawyer Natalie Gamble says in response in the report,
"It wouldn't be allowed here. Under the regulation of licensed fertility clinics, there are quite strict rules about how many embryos can be transferred and certainly you couldn't transfer embryos to two surrogates in the same cycle"
The article also raises an important issue:
"Medical experts believe twiblings represent a fertility phenomenon which has emerged as a direct result of India's estimated billion dollar surrogacy industry, an industry which critics say is driven by profit.
Surrogacy in the UK is a legal and ethical minefield. There are strict laws governing it and commercial surrogacy is banned.
Meanwhile, the Indian government is under increasing pressure to introduce laws to regulate the surrogacy industry."
Short excerpt from the news article:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The couple having four babies by two surrogates
A British couple are to become parents of two sets of twin babies carried by two Indian surrogate women they have never met. Experts say twiblings - or children born to separate surrogates but created from the same batch of embryos - are not uncommon in India.
The four babies, all due in March 2014, are the result of a commercial surrogacy agreement with a clinic in the Indian city of Mumbai.
The husband, aged 35 and wife, aged 36, who do not want to be identified, travelled to India in May following two miscarriages and several failed attempts at fertility treatment in the UK.
"I thought to myself why wait and why waste any time and go through ups and downs and attempts again. We've had a long ten-year journey with this," he says.
There are no official figures, but Natalie Gamble, a lawyer who specialises in international surrogacy cases, estimates hundreds of British couples travel to India for surrogacy each year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment