The Hindu Business Line : .in conceivable

Grouped in front of a computer, their eyes transfixed on the screen, the Israeli men engage in an animated conversation. They have a wide range to choose from - women of Caucasian, Black, Asian or Jewish background. There are blondes, brunettes, red heads and women with black hair. The choice can be narrowed further to the women's marital or parental status.

After watching a couple of women's video clips, these men select an attractive blonde. Now their sperms would fly to the US to meet her eggs and the embryos would travel to India to be nurtured in a rented womb. Ten months later they can fly to India to pick up their white baby that would kick its way into the world from a brown woman's womb. Neither parent of this child would have known or met each other.

Welcome to a new world where reproduction is independent of sexual act and babies are just a click away. The emerging business of birth outsourcing is the subject of Israeli documentary filmmaker Zippi Brand Frank. The award-winning feature Google Baby travels three continents to tell the story of the baby production industry in this era of globalisation.

Baby production venture

Zippi follows Israeli entrepreneur Doron Mamet, as he embarks on a new business venture: Baby production. From the comfort of their Israel home, his clients (a gay couple) shop for a preferred genetic material for their baby. Once they select the woman, Mamet gets down to business. Sperm is sent in frozen containers to laboratories in the US. Eggs are purchased on the Web and several embryos are produced, frozen, packed in liquid nitrogen containers and shipped by air to India where they are implanted into the wombs of local surrogates.

Mamet's "Outsourcing to India is very trendy now" statement is matter-of-fact, as he travels to meet Dr Nayna Patel in Anand, Gujarat. He wishes to know if she can provide surrogate mothers for embryos that would travel from the US.

Mamet is gay and has just fathered a baby girl with eggs purchased from an American woman and delivered by a surrogate in the US. As his friends troop into the house to greet the baby and congratulate Mamet and his partner, conversation veers around to the procedure's high cost in the US.

Then the Indian option surfaces at almost half the cost. Having sealed the deal with Dr Nayna, he returns to home turf and hooks up via Web-conferencing with a US company that would stash the eggs and make embryos.

An emotional journey

Zippi's camera trails this journey, and along the way raises questions and highlights dilemmas and issues. It even spares a moment for strange (or absurd for some) requests that surface. A 57-year-old woman asks if the entrepreneur could arrange for an egg donor, a sperm donor and a surrogate! To the filmmaker's credit, not for a moment does this powerful feature get judgmental.

"I was very conscious about not getting judgmental. I just wanted viewers to know that globalisation was happening here and that there was a technology aiding it," she said, while attending the film's screening at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. The documentary has already won an award at the Tel-Aviv International Documentary Film Festival.

The journey was an "emotional" one for Zippi , not because she was a woman interacting with other women - specially the surrogate mothers in Dr Nayna's clinic - but because she became a mother during the making of Google Baby. The 76-minute film in English, Hindi and Hebrew may be dispassionate but it raises several questions and captures the dreams, sacrifices and emotional roller-coaster of surrogates, who are poor and agree to do this so they could provide the basic necessities for their family, be it a house or their children's education.

The camera casts an unflinching gaze at an emotional surrogate, who breaks down after the baby is born. She knows she was hired to do a job, but for nine months her body nurtured a new life and it is tough to break the bond. She says, "I will give the child away with a smile on my lips and a heavy heart." She seeks solace in the fact that her family will have a roof over their heads.

From the moment the embryo is implanted in the surrogate, she is required to be under constant medical supervision at the hospital for nine months.

The need to survive.

Says Zippi, "I came to India with the assumption that westerners were exploiting these women, but I saw that it was the only way to earn decent money to provide education and build shelter. I was moved by the fact that these women were doing so much for their families... to survive."

In contrast, the US-based egg donor, a mother of two, undergoes the procedure to renovate her suburban home and enable her family to pursue hobbies. This is her second shot at egg donation and not rule out more.

It was the proliferation of ads inviting egg donors on Harvard campus that got Zippi, recipient of Neiman fellowship, interested in exploring the commercialisation of the baby production industry. She contacted Dr Nayna, who after initial reluctance agreed to participate in the project on the condition that the documentary will not be screened in India, to protect the women's identity. She maintains that this "service" is mutually beneficial to couples that yearn for a child and women who need the money.

Though the women do benefit, it does raise the disturbing possibility of women's bodies being treated as a saleable commodity. While dabbing an injection (one of several) and popping pills as preparation for the egg donation process, the American donor admits these drugs could have a long-term impact on her body but is willing to take that chance. In contrast, an Indian surrogate's husband, while dismissing women as "inferior to men as they can't think straight", acknowledges that the roof over his head was made possible with his wife's earnings and declares that she "will have to do it again so our child can get a decent education."

She will probably go with his decision. Whether it is out of free will or dictated by circumstances, we will never know.

Women's Feature Service

More Stories on : Health | Children & Parenting | Science & Technology

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Fitness Fusion

.in conceivable

Haute green platter

It rose against hunger

Restored pride

Space for a high achiever

Nine faces of the India story