Comment: Money, fertility tourism and the new human trafficking
5 Aug 2014 - 2:30pm
Comment: Money, fertility tourism and the new human trafficking
The popularity of fertility tourism shows that the world can still devise unique ways to literally sell a woman’s body to the highest bidder.
By Amy Gray
~snip~
Fertility tourism is a growing global industry, bringing in over $400 million a year in India alone. For the right price, people can buy IVF treatments, donated eggs and sperm along with a surrogate mother. The clients are often white and rich. The suppliers pressed into service are often neither.
As always, the most powerful people will always be those with the most money but the question must be asked: what are they buying and is it ethical? By using money and vulnerability as a means to coerce women into exploitative service, fertility tourism is an abuse of power that reduces the trafficked from people into produce.
Based on the UN’s definition of human trafficking, fertility tourism often results in human trafficking by recruiting people by through coercion, twisting power and vulnerability and giving payments that result in physical exploitation.
According to Janbua, already a mother, the surrogacy fees promised were 350,000 baht (A$11,669) which far exceeded the 20,000 baht (A$666) she and her husband struggled to live off every month. Janbua entered into the agreement by the force of poverty, telling reporters “my husband agreed because we didn't have money to pay our debt". She also claims she has not been fully paid.
She’s not alone.
As an industry that relies on the labour of women, it doesn’t always treat them well. In India, women’s groups are campaigning against deceptive agents pressing young women into service and signing contracts they can’t read. Many surrogate mothers are separated from their families to live in quarantined hostels with other women while others go into seclusion fearing social shame. There are cases of women dying during childbirth. This is the reality hidden from the pristine white clinics and smiling hosts promoted on websites.
~more at link~
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/05/comment-money-fertility-tourism-and-new-human-trafficking
Goodness I wish I could post the entire article.
The final paragraph and the last sentence certainly speak loudly~but who will choose to hear?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Three miscarriages on my own.
One lead to a blocked tube.
Salpingectomy.
Ob- Gyn goes into do that - husband has to sign abortion papers because there was an ectopic.
One miscarriage two embryos transferred.
My AMH may be low - but the eggs we have cultivated are flawless.
Because I have A.S. and an ethical Doctor - he won't transfer more than two at a time. Too much stress on my body. My miscarriage last November was due to walking pneumonia, a MRSA infection, and an A.S. flare. Two embryos gone.
It's not the brilliance - its the ethnicity. There are three collegiate women in Louisiana offering my genetic mix up for between $25K and $40K.
I'm beginning to wonder if this woman who got the boot at my fertility forum a few weeks ago was one of these brokers? She was only there for a few weeks, knew my facility and Doctor and suggested that we "make our money back"
by transferring our eggs to another facility after we have a child. I reported her to Admin as did a few other people. Her point was my appearance and genetic background being of high value to many women in France who descend from black Americans migrating there.
Getting that French, Celtic, black, Native, Germanic mix in France is extremely difficult. Funny - my husband is the one who brought this up a few weeks ago - but he's the one handing our facility his black card. He wants proof my eggs are destroyed when this is all said and done.
