[lbo-talk] advances in outsourcing

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Dec 31 08:36:00 PST 2007


<http://jezebel.com/339143/outsourcing-your-pregnancy-to-india-is- gaining-acceptance-doctors-say>

DIVISION OF LABOR Outsourcing Your Pregnancy To India Is "Gaining Acceptance," Doctors Say

Remember that supposedly burgeoning trend of women outsourced their pregnancies to India that had us all agape a few months back? Well, the AP visited Anand, India, the capital of the rent-a-womb industry, to report on the trend. Turns out people are really coming around to the notion! One happy customer, an Indian-born furniture importer based in LA, plans to return to India to contract out her second pregnancy. (To the same mother? They don't say. That would be weird, right? Or less weird?) Anyway, the mothers, pictured, all live together in a nice house where they are waited on hand and foot by a "team of maids, cooks and doctors" in an estate offset by "rolling hills." No wonder, then, that area women are "flocking" to sign up their uteri. And learning a little about prenatal care in the process.

<quote> Suman Dodia, a pregnant, baby-faced 26-year-old, said she will buy a house with the $4,500 she receives from the British couple whose child she's carrying. It would have taken her 15 years to earn that on her maid's monthly salary of $25. Dodia's own three children were delivered at home and she said she never visited a doctor during those pregnancies."It's very different with medicine," Dodia said, resting her hands on her hugely pregnant belly. "I'm being more careful now than I was with my own pregnancy." </quote?

While they're pregnant, surrogate moms are carefully counseled not to think of the babies as their own, but simply to think of themselves as, you know, gracious hosts. They are also counseled in double-edged sword that is the vast disparity in standards of livng.

<quote> "The fetus is theirs, so I'm not sad to give it back," said Gheewala, who plans to save the $6,250 she's earning for her two daughters' education. "The child will go to the U.S. and lead a better life and I'll be happy." </quote>

And maybe one day be wealthy and infertile enough to outsource her very own pregnancy.

Outsourcing Pregnancies To India [AP] <http://ap.google.com/article/ ALeqM5ikUwI9FMWYFyzrTTkkqNtMugzvZQD8TRTC000>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list