reality check

To those people who follow the path of "poor India" or "poor Indian women", what do you say about the US surrogate mothers? Relatively, they receive a lower remuneration than the Indian ladies. This is emotional clap trap. Consider where these poor Indian families would be if they did not "volunteer' to do this. The Australia Govt, per Standing Committee is reviewing Australian women being remunerated up to $10k or 3 months wages..what would you say then.....no help "poor'' India instead.

Michael form Melb. rejects the notion of these Indian women being exploited. Perhaps Michael, as a user of these "sevices" you are not the best person to look honestly at the effects on poor third world women of this high tech market. For anyone interested in finding out how these women themselves feel about this "business" transaction you could read http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,580209-3,00.html which gives an Indian womans account of how she got into surrogacy programme. The Dateline programme did not show a lot of happy smiling surrogates - it showed a lot of pregnant women lying on beds and sitting around in what looked like a womens prison, mostly looking pretty depressed about their situation. Do you really think these women are happy to be used as "incubators" for others babies? How much real "choice" do you think these women usually have in partaking in these programmes? India is notorious for the lack of equitable treatment of women. Husbands and male family members have complete control over women in most cases. Hasn't it occurred to you that for many women in India, if their husband or family learns that they could get a heap of money from making a young woman have a baby for a wealthy Westener they will be put under intense pressure, or outright forced, to do this to pay medical bills, educate their children etc etc. How can the doctors say these women have genuine choice? Michael talked about "this fundamental right of a woman" - Michael, I don't think you have any idea about real womans rights. Some things should NOT be for sale. The intimate human relationship between a woman and the baby she gives birth to should not be distorted into a commercial transaction. No matter how much you try to justify this market with claims it helps poor families financially, the fact remains this business dehumanises both the mother and the child. It is a form of medical, emotional and psychological abuse of women.

"What special people surrogate women are. They deserve financial compensation." Yes, just like the poor single girls who had their babies stolen in the 50-70's to satisfy the infertile. Were they special, No. They were called tramps, sl... and many other names and adopters refused to even tell their children they were adopted. This is just another form of adoption and if you think it does no harm to the mother during the 9 months then you have never carried a baby or have any idea at all.

Hi Yalda, I come from Gujarat itself. We all know that there is lot of poverty in India. millions of people do not have jobs. Even if they get jobs, they are not paid enough to feed their families. Lots of people are not well educated and lack skills which just adds to their inability to earn enough money and consequently with all this types of problems people take drastic steps to end their lives and I am sure that you would have seen all these problems by yourself. What I would like to say is that if the mutual agreement is created between two parties who have willingly consented by helping each other out in such an arrangement where no one's sentiments are hurt and both parties lives are improved, there should not be any problem whatsoever. I am quite sure that before choosing a surrogate mother, couples who approaches these medical institutions must be looking at their options and ofcourse there are various factors that influences their decisions. I would also like to emphasize on mental/psychological state of the couples who will be raising these children in the future. In my opinion more needs to be done on that side rather than calling on surrogate mothers business tactics. These surrogate mothers takes such decisions to reduce their family's hardship, to give better education to their children, to live a respectable life.

Well done Yalda, it was a really interesting story. I recently read on a blog from a women going through the India surrogacy program that channel seven are following her friends to India to do the exact story. Looks like SBS is first with the news.

Very good story Yalda, I found the program both informative and thought provoking. My only criticism, if you can call it criticism, was that the story was to short. Perhaps it needed to be picked up by the INSIGHT program so that we could know more about the legalities for an Australian couple if they were to use this surrogacy method.

I am disturbed by the story of the Baby Factory. What SBS did not point out was the oppossing voice was a catholic and involved in catholic Think Tanks. The comments from Nick Tonti- Filippini should of been in context of the Catholic view. I have friends who use the services of an agency to have a child and it is really nothing like what is being said in the story. Further only one agency was featured, no studies were quoted, and my friends are certainly involved in the life of the mother also. SBS can do better then gutter reporting.

I first read about this in the Sydney Morning Herald 3 years ago. It's an old story. Is the world so devoid of new stories that Dateline needs to rehash old ones? Or is this a poor attempt to draw in audiences, given our baby boom? Whatever the case, nothing new came out of it and the same old prejudices were aired.