Akanksha Infertility Clinic

Last updated

The Akanksha Infertility Clinic is a women's health centre located in Anand, Gujarat, India, [1] and headed by Dr Nayna Patel. [2] [3] The clinic was founded in 1999, and was originally focused on In Vitro Fertilization. India declared commercial surrogacy legal in 2002; however the clinic did not begin to do surrogacy until 2004. [4] Patel, who appeared on Oprah Winfrey's talk show in 2007, has produced more than 1000 surrogate babies as of October 2015.

Contents

Patel states that "we provide a legitimate service to those in need, whether it is the couple who desperately want a child or the woman who wishes to change her circumstances, to educate her children, build a house or pay off debts. [5] ”

Surrogacy

This works by the couple going to the clinic, requesting a surrogate, and essentially renting her womb for the next nine months. The surrogate will be implanted with the sperm and egg, and hopefully after having a successful birth, will give up the child to its parents. The women are then paid. Dr. Patel pays her surrogates around 400,000 rupees ($6,500). Couples are charged an average of $25,000 to $30,000 per baby.

Of the women who work as surrogates “nearly half described themselves as housewives and the rest were a mix of domestic, service, and manual laborers [4] ” . Most of them are married and have children of their own. They must live at the clinic, are heavily monitored and restricted, and are not allowed sex for the duration of their pregnancy. Their young children are allowed to stay with them, as a way to prevent to the women from getting attached to the baby they are carrying. During their required stay “residents are offered daily English classes and weekly lessons in computer use” and the director “arranges film screenings and gives out school backpacks and pencil boxes to surrogates’ children". [4]

In India, “surrogacy...is slated to add $2 billion to the nation's gross domestic product”. [4] So the country gets money, the surrogates get the needed money, and a couple gets a baby.

For comparison, in USA, the cost is $150,000, in a handful of states where it is permitted. For surrogates, the compensation outweighs the downside. A recent surrogate was the wife of an auto-rickshaw driver with three daughters of her own. she had to live in a hostel for nine months with 60 other surrogates so the clinic could monitor her health.

Akanksha claims an implantation success rate of 44%, similar to other Indian clinics, compared with a US norm of 31%. [6]

Controversy

Regulations and Rights

While surrogacy is legal, it is highly unregulated. They are attempting to make the surrogate mothers happy. However it does “little to improve the life for women” and takes away their rights to decide whether they want an abortion or not. [4] Another problem is that “lack of regulation could spark a price war for surrogacy”. [4] This means that other countries could have surrogates willing to be paid a lower wage per baby carried. This leads to surrogate clinics basically competing against other clinics in other countries, creating a “race to the bottom.” If this happens then the protections for surrogate mothers could decrease; “with countries slowly under-cutting fees and legal protections for surrogates along the way”. [4]

There are other cultural consequences as well. Women who are surrogates face the risk and consequences of being rejected from society or being discriminated against. There is another issue, the “dilemma of all rural surrogates: being suspected of adultery -a cause for shunning or worse”. [4]

A huge controversy related to money was observed as per this article India's Baby Factory | Journeyman Pictures

Citizenship

There was an issue of the citizenship of children, as many countries do not recognize surrogacy and these babies therefore have no legal standing [7]

Baby Manji controversy

A Japanese baby girl born to an Indian surrogate mother was in legal limbo after the couple who had intended to raise her divorced. [8] The three-month-old baby had been unable to leave India after her birth because she holds neither an Indian nor a Japanese nationality. The issue was resolved after the Japanese Government issued a one-year visa to her on humanitarian grounds, after the Indian Government had granted the baby a travel certificate in September in line with a Supreme Court direction. [9]

Legislation

The Ban on Surrogacy

In October 2015 a letter was sent by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The letter bans foreign couples getting Indian surrogates. [10] This sparked public outcry and protests. People are concerned about the effect the ban will have on the economy of Anand.

The surrogacy industry has played a role in transforming the economy of Anand in India and financially bettering the lives of thousands of poor families and the government's recent move to ban the practice will wipe out incomes. [11] “About 5,000 families in Anand are surviving on surrogacy,” says Dr Patel, whose clinic has been at the forefront of the country's commercial surrogacy sector. “There are the surrogates, the nannies, the rickshaw drivers, the hoteliers who employ hundreds of peoples, the restaurants, the shops. There are so many people directly or indirectly surviving on surrogacy, so it’s going to be a huge economic impact as far as Anand is concerned. [11] ”

Protections

In 2008 a law - the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill (ART) - was introduced to protect surrogates, the children and the commissioning parents. [12]

Dr Anup Gupta, the founder of Delhi IVF, a clinic that handles five to six cases a month said that "The legislation will facilitate surrogacy". [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assisted reproductive technology</span> Methods to achieve pregnancy by artificial or partially artificial means

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) includes medical procedures used primarily to address infertility. This subject involves procedures such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), cryopreservation of gametes or embryos, and/or the use of fertility medication. When used to address infertility, ART may also be referred to as fertility treatment. ART mainly belongs to the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. Some forms of ART may be used with regard to fertile couples for genetic purpose. ART may also be used in surrogacy arrangements, although not all surrogacy arrangements involve ART. The existence of sterility will not always require ART to be the first option to consider, as there are occasions when its cause is a mild disorder that can be solved with more conventional treatments or with behaviors based on promoting health and reproductive habits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surrogacy</span> Arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person

Surrogacy is an arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to delivery/labour on behalf of another couple or person, who will become the child's parent(s) after birth. People may seek a surrogacy arrangement when a couple does not wish to carry a pregnancy themselves, when pregnancy is medically impossible, when pregnancy risks are dangerous for the intended mother, or when a single man or a male same sex couple wish to have a child.

Third-party reproduction or donor-assisted reproduction is any human reproduction in which DNA or gestation is provided by a third party or donor other than the one or two parents who will raise the resulting child. This goes beyond the traditional father–mother model, and the third party's involvement is limited to the reproductive process and does not extend into the raising of the child. Third-party reproduction is used by couples unable to reproduce by traditional means, by same-sex couples, and by men and women without a partner. Where donor gametes are provided by a donor, the donor will be a biological parent of the resulting child, but in third party reproduction, he or she will not be the caring parent.

Egg donation is the process by which a woman donates eggs to enable another woman to conceive as part of an assisted reproduction treatment or for biomedical research. For assisted reproduction purposes, egg donation typically involves in vitro fertilization technology, with the eggs being fertilized in the laboratory; more rarely, unfertilized eggs may be frozen and stored for later use. Egg donation is a third-party reproduction as part of assisted reproductive technology.

The main family law of Japan is Part IV of Civil Code. The Family Register Act contains provisions relating to the family register and notifications to the public office.

Fertility tourism is the practice of traveling to another country or jurisdiction for fertility treatment, and may be regarded as a form of medical tourism. A person who can become pregnant is considered to have fertility issues if they are unable to have a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of unprotected intercourse. Infertility, or the inability to get pregnant, affects about 8-12% of couples looking to conceive or 186 million people globally. In some places, rates of infertility surpass the global average and can go up to 30% depending on the country. Areas with lack of resources, such as assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), tend to correlate with the highest rates of infertility.

Pinki Virani is an Indian writer, journalist, human-rights activist and writer. She is the author of Once was Bombay, Aruna's Story, Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India, and Deaf Heaven. Her fifth book is called Politics of the Womb -- The Perils of Ivf, Surrogacy & Modified Babies.

Surrogacy in India and Indian surrogates became increasingly popular amongst intended parents in industrialised nations because of the relatively low costs and easy access offered by Indian surrogacy agencies. Clinics charged patients between $10,000 and $28,000 for the complete package, including fertilization, the surrogate's fee, and delivery of the baby at a hospital. Including the costs of flight tickets, medical procedures and hotels, this represented roughly a third of the price of the procedure in the UK and a fifth of that in the US. Surrogate mothers received medical, nutritional and overall health care through surrogacy agreements.

<i>A.G.R. v. D.R.H</i>

A.G.R. v. D.R.H & S.H. is a ruling by the Superior Court of New Jersey, Hudson County Vicinage, and is the first precedent regarding gestational surrogacy in New Jersey. The ruling was handed down by Judge Francis Schultz on December 23, 2009.

Gynaecworld is a women's health centre. It is located in Mumbai, India and is one of several Mumbai IVF clinics that also provides surrogacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surrogacy laws by country</span>

The legal aspects of surrogacy in any particular jurisdiction tend to hinge on a few central questions:

Law in Australia with regard to children is often based on what is considered to be in the best interest of the child. The traditional and often used assumption is that children need both a mother and a father, which plays an important role in divorce and custodial proceedings, and has carried over into adoption and fertility procedures. As of April 2018 all Australian states and territories allow adoption by same-sex couples.

Commodification of the womb is a Marxist concept related to the sale of functions performed by the human uterus.

In July 2014, a Thai woman, Pattaramon Chanbua, hired as a surrogate mother by an Australian couple, David John Farnell and Wenyu Wendy Li, sought to raise money for her critically-ill surrogate son, Gammy. The infant had been in her care since December 2013, when the biological parents, Farnell and Li, had left Thailand with baby Gammy's twin sister Pipah.

Tiruchirappalli Chelvaraj Anand Kumar (1936–2010) was an Indian biologist and reproductive biologist and the creator of the second scientifically documented test tube baby in India. He was the founder of Hope Infertility Clinic, Bangalore and the director of the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health. He was an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medical Sciences and a recipient of the Sanjay Gandhi National Award. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1977, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Louisa Maria Ghevaert is a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales.

Surrogacy is legal in Canada provided that it is altruistic (unpaid). The Assisted Human Reproduction Act of 2004 criminalizes commercial surrogacy. The validity of surrogacy contracts and the process for establishing parenthood of the child is governed by provincial law. Quebec fails to recognize any surrogacy contracts, whereas British Columbia has the most permissive laws governing surrogacy. Provinces also vary in the degree to which they compensate surrogacy expenses, such as IVF procedures.

Circle Surrogacy & Egg Donation is a US-based surrogacy and egg donation agency headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Circle Surrogacy carries an audited success rate for intended parents having a baby at 99.3%.

Amrita Pande is an Indian sociologist and feminist ethnographer based in South Africa, tenured as a professor at the University of Cape Town. She was the first to publish a detailed ethnographical study on the surrogacy industry in India with her book Wombs in Labor (2014). Pande has also been appointed as the lead for the National Research Foundation project into the surrogacy industry of South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Konstantin N. Svitnev</span>

Konstantin N. Svitnev is an international reproductive lawyer of Russian origin. Svitnev was born in 1966 and grew up in Moscow. Svitnev spent much of his legal career as an advocate for gender equality and reproductive rights...

References

  1. ↑ Kari Points, [COMMERCIAL SURROGACY AND FERTILITY TOURISM IN INDIA The Case of Baby Manji https://web.duke.edu/kenanethics/CaseStudies/BabyManji.pdf Archived 2013-10-02 at the Wayback Machine ], Case Studies in Ethics, The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University
  2. ↑ Nita Bhalla and Mansi Thapliyal Mon Sep 30, 2013, India seeks to regulate its booming 'rent-a-womb' industry , Reuters
  3. ↑ Release, ANI Press (October 17, 2022). "Dr Niket Patel of Akanksha IVF hospital and research institution awarded best IVF hospital by former Gujarat Deputy CM Nitin Patel". www.business-standard.com.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Hochschild, Arlie (September 19, 2009). "Childbirth at the Global Crossroads". Archived from the original on March 8, 2018.
  5. ↑ "Akanksha". ivf-surrogate.com. Archived from the original on 2018-03-08. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
  6. ↑ "Inside India's Rent-a-Womb Business | Mother Jones". 2016-04-13. Archived from the original on 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2023-07-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  7. ↑ Doshi, Vidhi (2016-01-03). "'We pray that this clinic stays open': India's surrogates fear hardship from embryo ban". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 2018-03-09. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
  8. ↑ Hannah Gardner, [Surrogate baby in legal limbo http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/surrogate-baby-in-legal-limbo#ixzz2gP5nCM00 Archived 2013-10-18 at the Wayback Machine ], The National, August 6, 2008
  9. ↑ "Baby Manji reaches Osaka". The Indian Express. 2008-11-04. Retrieved 2023-05-10.
  10. ↑ "Surrogate mothers stage protest in Anand". The Times of India. October 31, 2015. Archived from the original on May 11, 2021.
  11. 1 2 "Indian surrogacy ban leads to pain and anguish for Gulf couples". The National. Archived from the original on 2018-03-08. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
  12. ↑ "India seeks to regulate its booming 'rent-a-womb' industry". Reuters. 2013-09-30. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  13. ↑ "The Island". 2016-03-04. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2023-07-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)

Draft, Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill, , MINISTRY OF HEALTH & FAMILY WELFARE GOVT. OF INDIA, NEW DELHI

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.