From surrogacy to test tube, motherhood has many stories. At any age any stage modern medical science has provision for men and woman to enjoy parenting. Recently, the young woman who suffered from inborn absence of the uterus since birth, which rendered her incapable of conceiving, was operated on to transplant her 44-year-old mother’s organ to her. The condition of the recipient and donor is stable. If the procedure is a complete success, the patient would be able to conceive through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and deliver through a caesarean section. But she will have to continue to take immuno-suppressant drugs for the rest of her life to prevent her body from rejecting the uterus. The first such procedure was performed in Sweden in 2012 and the patient gave birth to the world’s first baby from a transplanted uterus in 2014.
India is known for its surrogate mothers, by women who cannot read or write but can become pregnant and will do so for money. Most of these women meet their clients once or twice, if at all. And until recently, they bore children for foreigners who never even saw them. For many years, transnational surrogacy was a thriving business in India. India’s total assisted-reproduction sector has been reported as being worth between millions.
While legal in India since 2002, the industry has never been regulated. There had been repeated attempts to draft and pass comprehensive surrogacy legislation. Then, in 2015, the Indian government effectively banned paid surrogacy for foreigners. In October that year, the government filed an affidavit in the Indian Supreme Court, arguing that commercial surrogacy on the part of foreigners invited the exploitation of poor women. Within days, the Indian Council of Medical Research, a government regulatory body, ordered fertility doctors not to accept new foreign surrogacy clients. The Indian home ministry followed up by denying visas to foreigners seeking surrogacy. Swiftly, international surrogacy became not illegal, but virtually impossible. Arguably, the ban was inspired not just by concern for poor women, but by the unappealing image foreign surrogacy gave India. Stories circulated about stateless babies caught between countries, and about women who had died during labour.
When the Indian home ministry abruptly banned gay foreign surrogacy clients in 2012, Indian fertility clinics shipped Indian surrogates across the border to Nepal. When Nepal also banned transnational surrogacy in 2015, as did Thailand, industry insiders told me they believed that Indian surrogates were being rerouted to African countries instead. They also said that the ban will merely drive the practice underground. The ban was inspired not just by concern for poor women, but by the unappealing image foreign surrogacy gave India.
Apart from surrogacy, there are many stories like 61-year-old gives birth to her own grandson. Old woman gave birth to her own grandson after serving as surrogate for her daughter who was unable to carry a baby. There are some sad stories too, where a couple who used the woman’s 12-year-old daughter as an unwilling “surrogate mother” because she was unable to have any more children.
A woman in India could enter the record books as one of the oldest ever to give birth. Daljinder Kaur, who’s believed to be at least 70 years old, gave birth to a son. The baby was the first for Kaur and her 79-year-old husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, after nearly five decades of marriage. She has choice of adopting baby but she preferred having her own child and successfully attempted one.
Daljinder Kaur says she is 70 years old. But the clinic in the Indian state of Haryana, National Fertility and Test Tube Baby Centre, which helped Kaur become pregnant, put her age at 72. Many people in India, particularly those now over 50, don’t know their exact age because they don’t have birth certificates. In 2006, another Indian woman, Rajo Devi, gave birth to a daughter at the age of 70, after treatment at the same clinic. If Kaur is 72, as the clinic claims, she would be the oldest woman in the world to give birth to a baby. In the U.S., the CDC reports that about 600 women a year give birth in their 50s, and in Germany last year, a 65-year-old grandmother delivered quadruplets. But experts say the odds that IVF treatment will be successful decline steeply once a woman is in her 40s.
There are many ways one can opt for parenthood, once a couple has completed their family following IVF treatment, they may still have embryos stored. In this scenario, the couple have the option to donate these embryos to another couple who have not been able to conceive through fertility treatment. In special cases, it is possible to use a combination of donor services as long as at least one of the people seeking treatment has a biological ‘stake’ in the pregnancy. For instance, a woman can use donor sperm and donor eggs, and have the resulting embryo transferred into her own uterus. Donor treatment and surrogacy come with important social and ethical responsibilities. Donor sperm is often recommended when a man has no usable sperm, or when his sperm are unable to fertilise his partner’s eggs. It is also an option for single women and same sex couples. Sperm can be obtained from a personal donor (often a family member or friend) or a clinic-recruited donor.
Having a child is no more a challenge or no more a hassle, if you have money and willingness, you can be parent by all means.
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