India's Outsourcing Starts in the Womb

It sounds like an Onion headline, but you can now outsource your pregnancy to India. As reported by the Associated Press, the western Indian city of Anand (known for its milk, natch) has become the preggers capital. The women, who've delivered 40 babies to infertile couples from around the world, share a spacious house and are taken care of by a team of maids,cooks and doctors.

Commercial surrogacy has been legal in India since 2002, as it is in many other countries, including the United States. But India is the leader in making it a viable industry rather than a rare fertility treatment. Experts say it could take off for the same reasons outsourcing in other industries has been successful: a wide labor pool working for relatively low rates...

...Ritu Sodhi, a furniture importer from Los Angeles who was born in India, spent
$200,000 trying to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization, and was considering spending another $80,000 to hire a surrogate mother in the
United States...Then, on the Internet, Sodhi found Patel's clinic.

After spending about $20,000 — more than many couples because it took the surrogate mother several cycles to conceive — Sodhi and her husband are now back home with their 4-month-old baby, Neel. They plan to return to
Anand for a second child.

The wombs-for-rent earn between $4,500 to $7,000 per pregnancy. "The industry is not regulated by the government. Health officials have issued nonbinding ethical guidelines and called for legislation to protect the surrogates and the children."

How soon until Lifetime debuts a reality show in the house of wombs?

[via Jezebel]