By Sandra Schulz
Nagadurga was three months' pregnant when her brother-in-law suddenly showed up at the clinic. Your husband, he said, has been in an accident. He was hit by a Jeep and was lying, unconscious and bleeding, on the street, and now he is in the hospital. The brother-in-law had come to get money for her husband's operation, and Nagadurga gave him everything she had: 30,000 rupees, her first payment, which she received after confirmation of the pregnancy. It was 20 percent of the total payment, payable after the critical ultrasound examination -- money in return for a heartbeat. Nagadurga wept and wept, and she stopped eating, until Dr. Rama Devi informed her that she was endangering the baby's life. She was told that it was her obligation to deliver the baby. She spoke with her husband by telephone every day, from her hospital bed to his, and when his condition improved he came to her.
At first the couple stayed in a patient room, at a cost of 300 rupees a day, or about €5 ($7). It was one of the clinic's cheaper rooms, but it was still too expensive for the Pakistanis, and so Nagadurga and her husband moved to a 200-rupee room off the staircase. They are now staying in a room wedged between the first and second floor, but at least they have a window. The surrogate mother on the fourth floor, who is carrying a child for a Chinese couple, is living in a windowless room with fluorescent lighting. Drinking water is available on the fourth floor and hot water on the second.
Nagadurga has never paid as much attention to a baby as to this one, which she will have to give away. "In the past, in my other two pregnancies," she says, "It was like this: God gave us the child, and God kept watch over the child. But this time the baby is made on earth, and so we have to pay special attention to it."
When her own children were growing in her womb, she ate the same food as everyone else in the house -- mostly rice. Now the Pakistani parents pay her a monthly stipend for food, and Nagadurga is on a special diet that includes more milk, more eggs and more fruit. In addition, she takes vitamin tablets three times a day and gets a lot of rest. It has been two months since she last left the clinic, when she went to the temple to pray for a natural birth.
An astrologist once predicted that she would give birth to five sons. What the astrologist did not say was that her second son would die. Before his death, Nagadurga had the "family planning operation," and her fallopian tubes are now blocked. She can no longer have children naturally, but she can work as a surrogate mother. All she needs is a functioning uterus, which she has.
Nagadurga is looking forward to the birth, because it will mean that she can finally return home to her own son, who is now staying with his grandmother. He's fortunate though. Other surrogate mothers have to put their children into a home while they carry another couple's child. Nagadurga speaks with her son by telephone every day. He's a good boy, healthy and understanding. Once, when he asked for a remote-controlled toy car, Nagadurga and her husband told him that they didn't have enough money to buy it for him. He never asked again. When the family came to the clinic the first time for a consultation, the son picked up a few sentences and told his grandmother that mommy and daddy had gone to the doctor to get a baby. Later he asked his parents: "Will I have a brother or a sister?" The father replied: "The baby is not for us. Stop asking questions!" The son, the good boy, fell silent again.
Out of shame, Nagadurga has told the other patients that she is carrying a child for an infertile aunt. She fears others will think she is tainted by the blemish of impurity, by the immorality of the fact that something created by the sperm of a stranger is growing inside her body. And yet it was not sperm but an embryo that was transferred into her.
Nagadurga and her husband have never met the Pakistani couple. Another Indian woman was originally supposed to carry the child, but she had two miscarriages and Nagadurga jumped in as a backup surrogate mother. If things had gone the way they normally do, at least the couple and Nagadurga would have had coffee together in Dr. Rama Devi's consultation room. Sometimes small gifts are given during these meetings. An American man once brought along a bag filled with used children's clothing and his wife's old shoes. He had originally intended to donate the items to an orphanage or to flood victims, but then he decided to give them to the surrogate mother. He flew back home and did not return until the child was born. He was given e-mailed updates in the interim. This is usually the way it works in Dr. Rama Devi's clinic.
But Nagadurga will hand over the baby to two strangers at the end of November. The Pakistanis will arrive 15 days before the due date. "How will I be able to speak to them?" she asks. "They don't even understand my language."
When the Pakistani couple heard that everything was going smoothly, they sent Dr. Rama Devi an e-mail. "Thanks very much for this good news," they wrote in English. "Our respect and our good wishes to all doctors and staff who have dedicated themselves to this noble cause in the service of mankind." In the next paragraph, the couple wrote: "I shall transfer the said amount as soon as possible." Nagadurga's husband says: "We are giving them such a valuable gift. They must want to know how the child is doing, and whether Nagadurga is taking her medications, but why have they not visited us once throughout the nine months?"
Nagadurga spreads her hand across her groin, her legs bent.
"I am supposed to be earning the money for the family," he says. "She is doing it for me, and so I help her."
The amount that the clinic recommends as "compensation" for the surrogate mothers is 300,000 rupees (€4,450). But the price varies. Some surrogate mothers are better negotiators than others. Some have no choice in the matter. Nagadurga's husband says that they will receive 150,000 rupees. His monthly salary at the chicken farm is 3,000 rupees.
The husband plans to use the money his wife is earning to buy her a real wedding necklace, one made of authentic gold. The pendant she now wears on a gold string is made of tin. But he also has new debts to repay: 15,000 rupees to his mother and 15,000 to the mother-in-law; all of them contributed money for his operation. "What the Pakistanis are giving us will soon be used up. But what we are giving them -- they'll have it for a lifetime."
If any of the money is left over, Nagadurga will take it to the bank and invest it for her son, her only child. She wants him to become a computer specialist. "No," she says, she will not work as a surrogate mother again. "No," says her husband, "never again."
Dr. Rama Devi, for her part, plans to expand. She wants to have clinics throughout India and abroad. Not in Europe, with its many laws, she says, but someplace in the Caribbean. Then the Americans will no longer have to make the long trip to India. Or perhaps the future lies on another continent, where artificial insemination has hardly been available until now. Perhaps Dr. Rama Devi will export her knowledge to Africa.
But for now she is just expecting her next customer, a 45-year-old British woman, who arrives this month. The woman has ordered egg cells and a surrogate mother, and her husband will supply the sperm. To improve the chances of success and speed things up, the woman has opted for two parallel pregnancies. Two or three embryos will be transferred into her own womb -- and just as many into the womb of a surrogate mother. If both pregnancies are successful, she says, she will be pleased with two children. And if both attempts fail, she will still be entitled to a third attempt, because she purchased a package that includes up to three cycles of in vitro fertilization. Or perhaps both she and the surrogate mother will give birth to twins, in which case the British woman will suddenly find herself with four children made in India. She will also sign an additional clause in the contract. The new clause is meant to stipulate who takes care of the baby in the event of a divorce, so that there cannot be another Manji, a child who ends up with six mothers.
On the 27th day of her life, Manji's case is referred to India's highest court. Her 69-year-old grandmother, with her gray curls, gold-rimmed glasses and tennis shoes, has come to New Delhi to hear the court's decision. The court building is an impressive red stone structure with a white dome. Manji's grandmother, who is wearing her best green blouse and a necklace, presses herself against the wall, trying to avoid the journalists, including those from Japan -- the only ones she could actually talk to. She speaks no English and had never been abroad before. She greets her attorney by pressing her palms together, the Indian form of greeting she has learned. She swings her arms back and forth, perhaps because it is humid, or because she is agitated. "Bag," a security guard says to her, miming the shape with his hands, and she quickly hands it over, together with the pills she is carrying in the pocket of her trousers. She is anxious to do everything right, hoping that the nightmare will soon come to an end.
In the courtroom, a small room with paneled walls and oil paintings in gold frames, she sits motionlessly in her seat, sometimes dropping her head to her chest and sometimes staring at the back of the seat in front of her, as the case takes its course.
A non-governmental organization has gotten involved, voicing its concerns about what it calls child trafficking and an abandoned child. Manji's attorney is a famous human rights lawyer, who has offered her services pro bono. The judge asks, his voice trembling: "Which law forbids surrogacy?" The NGO attorney replies, his voice firm: "Which law permits surrogacy?" The problem is that there is no law, merely guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which legalize surrogacy.
In the end, the court rules that Manji may remain in the care of her grandmother, for the time being, and the case is adjourned until mid-September. It appears that Manji is stuck in India, the country that was only meant to produce her.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the Sept. 15, 2008 issue of DER SPIEGEL.
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