Commercial surrogacy is intensely controversial – and nowhere more so than in India, where foreigners hire local women to bear their children at bargain prices. The $450 million-a-year industry has spurred dispute everywhere but one voice is nearly always missing: that of the surrogate mothers. In one of the slum cities of Mumbai I found out about the “Secret Circle”: women who make a living renting their wombs, who get involved in surrogacy by word of mouth and who keep this as a secret to hide from the eyes of their communities. Many expectations and dreams for a better life lay behind their decision, as many complications and disappointment await them as the pregnancy carries on.
Commercial surrogacy is intensely controversial – and nowhere more so than in India, where foreigners hire local women to bear their children at bargain prices: $4,000 - $7,000, compared to $25,000 in the US. The $450 million-a-year industry has spurred dispute everywhere but, in the articles and debates, one voice is nearly always missing – that of the surrogate mothers themselves.
Commercial surrogacy became legal in India in 2002. New practices open every year, and, with the help of medical tourist agents, draw more parents from home and overseas.
Few foreigners know about the experience of surrogate mothers, least of all the intended parents, many of whom never meet the woman who carries their child.
Mumbai is surrounded by satellite cities and suburbs constituted by slums from where millions of people every day pour into the city.
In one of these slum cities I found out about a “secret circle†of egg donors and surrogate mothers – secret because these women often conceal their work from disapproving neighbors and part of their families. This social stigma is just one challenge that the surrogate mothers face, along with a lack of medical consent and financial bargaining power. Still, women welcome the chance to do this work– a complex perspective that traditional news stories, which cast the women as marginal figures in a foreign couple’s story, fail to capture. In my project, by contrast, surrogate mothers are at the center of each frame and they become the storytellers. My aim is to photograph each woman’s disposition and depicting the everyday objects that make up the texture of her life. I aim to create suspense and invite questions that would bring audience closer to these women.