The Question of Surrogacy

Surrogacy

The action of a woman having a baby for another woman who is unable to do so herself

Finding the Lost Boy: Commercial Surrogacy in India (2015) | Foreign Correspondent

Back to menu          IMPORTANT CONTENT

18 aug. 2019

 
The extraordinary case of the twin boy left behind in India was first revealed by Foreign Correspondent and ABC News earlier in 2015. But his identity and fate stayed a mystery.

“It’s a criminal offence in many places. I think it’s an appalling thing.” – Australian judge

The decision of the Australian adoptive parents shocked senior Australian judges interviewed by Foreign Correspondent.

“Was the child sold? Was the child left on the street? What has happened to the child?” – Australian judge

“Whether he’s been placed in a rich, well to do family where he gets every amenity, we don’t know.” – Arun Dohle, child protection advocate

Reporter Samantha Hawley teams up with two Indian child protection campaigners as they weave through Delhi’s labyrinthine bureaucracy and backstreets on a hunt for the twins’ birth records, the boy’s adoption papers and details of the surrogate mother and Australian parents.

Hawley reveals how the case worried Australian consular officials in Delhi. Australian High Commission staff tried desperately to persuade the Australian family to take both twins back home.

But Canberra sent approval for citizenship and a single passport to be given to just one child – the girl – despite international commercial surrogacy being outlawed in the Australian parents’ home state.

“I would describe it as aiding and abetting the Australian couple abandoning the child.” – senior New Delhi lawyer Shekhar Naphade

“We have done everything legal.” – Australian father of the boy left behind

In this tragic story about one baby boy who became the by-product of an unruly $500 million industry, two leading judges tell Foreign Correspondent it’s now time for the Australian Government to take a lead in reforming the system.

1 Baby M and the Question of Surrogacy | Retro Report | The New York Times

Back to menu

24 mrt. 2014

The custody battle over Baby M was the first time a court considered surrogacy. Today’s families are created in many different ways. But have we resolved the question of surrogacy?
 
VERY IMPORTANT CONTENT

2 Commercial Surrogacy Exploiting Women Of The Developing World?


Back to menu

6 mei 2014

The Baby Makers: The controversial new export industry that’s transforming lives for impoverished Indians and Infertile western couples.

Subscribe to Journeyman for more: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c…
For downloads and more information visit: http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=67063&b…

Assisted reproductive technology has become a booming industry in India. Around 1500 surrogacy centres give hope to desperate couples, helping lift surrogate mothers out of poverty; but at what cost?

“We tried IVF for 4,5 years. I fell pregnant 4 times and lost all 4 babies”, says Kali Gerakas from Australia. She is now the proud mother of twins, Costa and Christina. Surrogacy has become a lucrative industry in many parts of India. Some believe the $7000 fee per birth, is a win-win situation, for both hopeful foreign parents, and Indian surrogate mothers. But with many surrogates coming from very poor backgrounds with little or no education, there are concerns that some are pressed into the industry by their husbands and families, as a quick way to make money. “They have been brainwashed because they are so poor”, argues Kishwar Desai, author and surrogacy critic, “people are forgetting that there are human beings and emotions involved”. In this highly unregulated industry, parents’ dreams face exploitation by overcharging clinics. But as pioneering commercial surrogacy business person Dr Patel believes: “if you feel that the childless should live a life of misery, or the poor are meant to remain poor, then you will consider this as something immoral, a baby making factory”.

ABC Australia – Ref: 6087

Journeyman Pictures is your independent source for the world’s most powerful films, exploring the burning issues of today. We represent stories from the world’s top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. On our channel you’ll find outstanding and controversial journalism covering any global subject you can imagine wanting to know about.

Back to menu

3 The Innocent Casualties Of India’s Surrogacy Industry

Back to menu

6 jul. 2015

About A Boy: The search for an abandoned baby twin in New Delhi, left behind his sister’s adoptive parents.
 

The story of a twin boy born via surrogacy in India caused outcry after it emerged he was left behind by his Australian parents, who took only his twin sister. In this report, we try to find the missing boy. 

How do you find a toddler in a nation of more than a billion people when you don’t even know the child’s name? This sprawling hunt for the surrogate baby left behind in India’s capital reveals the underside of an international surrogacy industry, wide open for abuse. “Was the child sold? Was the child left on the street? What has happened to the child?”, asks Australian Chief Judge John Pascoe. He and Chief Justice Diana Bryant were shocked that Australians were at the forefront of an industry “commoditizing children”. Since the incident, India no longer grants Australians Visas for surrogacy deals, but the narrative of the twin boy who was left behind remained unresolved. Now reporter Samantha Hawley joins two Indian child protection campaigners to reveal the full story of the adoption that shocked the world. “You cannot just commission two children and leave one behind”, says Arun Dohle, one of the protection advocates. His colleague Anjali Pawar is similarly driven by the injustice. I feel really bad about that child and angry at the authorities and the parents, the way they treated that child as a commodity”, she says.

ABC Australia – Ref: 6486 

Journeyman Pictures is your independent source for the world’s most powerful films, exploring the burning issues of today. We represent stories from the world’s top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. On our channel you’ll find outstanding and controversial journalism covering any global subject you can imagine wanting to know about.

4 Exposing Mexico’s Surrogacy Industry

Back to menu

28 jul. 2014

The Baby Business: The Cancun Clinic that offers hope, but only deals in misery

Surrogacy entrepreneur Rudy Rupak considers himself something of a Hollywood-style dream-maker. Yet as clients of his unscrupulous Cancun-based clinic had the misfortune to find out, he deals only in nightmares.

“I’m the uncle to about 750 kids around the globe, and it’s a great feeling”, boasts the saccharine CEO of commercial baby-making firm ‘Planet Hospital’. “To grow a company that brings joy to people’s lives is about as close to being Walt Disney as I’ll ever get.” However, presiding over a money-grabbing operation that exploits the last and most desperate hopes of intended parents otherwise unable to conceive, Rupak’s character is more in the mold of a one-dimensional Disney villain. “Planet Hospital was run like a Ponzi scheme”, claims Catherine Moscarello, a client and former employee of Planet Hospital. “They price the services based on how desperate they figure the parents are.” International commercial surrogacy is booming in places where regulatory frameworks are rickety and consumer protections next to non-existent. Mexico’s legal loopholes make it a perfect hunting-ground for predatory operators like Rupak, who charge tens of thousands of dollars for the promise of a healthy baby. “He is loveable and sweet and pretends to be human. He’s not – he’s evil.” This report tracks Rupak down to his upmarket LA home and asks the questions his destitute customers want to hear.

ABC Australia – Ref 6184

Journeyman Pictures is your independent source for the world’s most powerful films, exploring the burning issues of today. We represent stories from the world’s top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. On our channel you’ll find outstanding and controversial journalism covering any global subject you can imagine wanting to know about.

5 Inside the corrupted world of commercial surrogacy | 60 Minutes Australia

1 okt. 2019

It’s the biggest gamble childless couples wanting to experience the wonder of parenthood can take: the decision to venture down the complicated and all too often corrupted path of commercial surrogacy. In Australia, paying someone to carry a baby for you is illegal, but it’s a different story in countries like Mexico where laws are open to greater interpretation. There, making babies has become a big but very risky business. David and Nicky Beard were so desperate to become dads they paid a huge amount of money to a baby broker in Mexico. What should have been the happiest time of their lives became a Mexican stand-off as these new dads faced coming home without their newborn babies.
 
For forty years, 60 Minutes have been telling Australians the world’s greatest stories. Tales that changed history, our nation and our lives. Reporters Liz Hayes, Allison Langdon, Tara Brown, Charles Wooley, Liam Bartlett and Sarah Abo look past the headlines because there is always a bigger picture. Sundays are for 60 Minutes.

6 India’s Baby Factory – India

2 mrt. 2009

March 2009 Welcome to the Gujarat baby factory where over 50 women are carrying babies for wealthy Westerners. Is commercial surrogacy a valid way out of poverty or an excuse for the West to rip off the Third World? Produced by SBS/Dateline Distributed by Journeyman Pictures
 

7 Ethics of Outsourcing Pregnancy to India – Michael Sandel

Back to menu

27 jul. 2009
 

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/07/20/Michael_San…

Political philosopher Michael Sandel analyzes the moral implications of using poor women in developing countries like India as commercial surrogate mothers. Sandel challenges the audience to debate the ethics of outsourcing surrogacy as a profitable business.

—–

Harvard Professor Michael Sandel deliveres a speech titled “Markets and Morals” as part of the Chautauqua Institution 2009 Summer Lecture Series. He tackles some of economics’ toughest ethical questions, such as the business of commercial surrogacy and the price of citizenship. – Chautauqua Institution

Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980.

He is the author of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 1982, 2nd edition, 1997; translated into eight foreign languages), Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1996), Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics (Harvard University Press, 2005), and The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007).

His writings also appear in general publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The New York Times.

8 Mom SELLS Her Baby to Strangers Prank

6 mrt. 2018

 
Filmed in Montreal, Quebec Welcome to the world-famous Just for Laughs Gags channel, where we pull public pranks on unsuspecting Montreal residents and tourists.