To Let: A Healthy Womb

Surrogate motherhood is perhaps the "in" thing these days. We have
witnessed three movies based on the subject being released in India in
the last one year and now the concept seems to be making its presence
on the idiot box as well. It's easy to pass off three hours watching an
emotional drama of two ladies willing to enter into a transaction such
as this, but is it really that easy in real life?

Motherhood for a woman signifies a new birth for herself. It's an
emotional journey where every moment is deemed precious. In the nine
months that a woman carries a baby within her, she feels life
developing inside her body. She nurtures the baby with her own blood.
She feels its breath. She senses its movements. She waits for only that
one moment in all her days of pregnancy - the moment when she will be
able to see her own child. The moment when her little bundle of joy
will be in her arms, and she will be able to call it her own. That's
the pride of motherhood. Can any woman trade that pride?

A surrogate mother, as we have seen or read about her, functions as an
alternative means to have a child for couples who cannot have one of
their own. The couple transfers its procreative genetic material to
another woman's body and wait happily for three quarters of a year
before being legally termed as "parents". Very convenient I would say.
But what about the surrogate mother? How easy is it for her to separate
herself from the life she is responsible for? Yes she did enter into
this agreement of her own accord, but did she at that time anticipate
what it would like be to experience motherhood? Can any woman who
hasn't known maternal joys anticipate such a situation?

I am unmarried. I have absolutely no inkling as to when I will decide
to enter the rigors of motherhood. I have no maternal inclinations
except for the general fact that I like kids. Yet, I cannot entertain
the thought of giving away my (unborn) child to somebody else! At a
stage where I am only thinking and not really an active participant in
this situation, I get the jitters. Can you even imagine the extent of
insecurity a woman feels when she has in reality undergone an
experience such as this? What must pass through her mind each day? And
how deep must her anguish be when she finally parts with her own flesh
and blood? Be it for money or as a social service to a relative or
friend, no woman can ever be paid adequately or thanked enough for
bringing a child onto this earth and disowning it.

And the so-called legal mother - is it any easier for her? To hold out
her hands one fine day and accept a child delivered by another woman
and call it hers? To shed away all fears that the surrogate mom would
one day come and claim the child? To "feel" that the child is really
her own without having borne it or fed it? To overcome the emotional
detachment with the fetus and start bonding with a child she is told is
hers for keepsake? Is it really as convenient for her as it is made out
to be?

Agreed that giving birth to a child and bringing it up are two separate
issues. Agreed that it doesn't really matter in the end. Agreed that
it's a noble cause for which this concept was developed. Agreed to all
points in favor of a foster womb. But is it really worth all the
emotional complications? Is it not better in the end to adopt an orphan
so that you don't end up being responsible for another person's
anguish? Is it really fair?

Life is not a three-hour movie or a soap opera where all is hunky dory
in the end. Life is a series of questions we need to find answers to.
And sometimes these questions might not directly concern us...but
should we make ourselves so closed so as not to be able to look beyond
ourselves?

Think about it.