‘House of Surrogates’, the feature-length documentary screening on Sunday July 27th on the ABC2 is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. The film delves into the world of surrogacy in India, in particular an institution where local women are employed to carry children for wealthy, often foreign couples, and all live under the one roof.
Surrogacy is an increasingly popular option for gay couples who wish to start a family, so it was fascinating to learn about this non-traditional method of reproduction. The ABC also screened a documentary about this topic from the parental perspective entitled ‘My Weird and Wonderful Family’, about a pair of gay British millionaires who had fathered three children using surrogacy and were going through the process of having another. This portrayal of surrogacy focused more on the family and the life they had built more so than the method of reproduction itself, and the couple in this case used a U.S. woman as a surrogate. Given that a significant number of couples who use surrogacy are of the same sex, it’s a shame that ‘House of Surrogates’ didn’t include any same gender couples or LGBT families. However having seen this very different representation of surrogacy to ‘House of Surrogates’, the striking difference between the lives of the couples using surrogacy and the surrogates themselves was all the more striking.
This difference was an integral part of the narrative in ‘House of Surrogates’, and it’s one of the things that made the documentary so confronting. Several women who are employed as surrogates have their stories told, and the film explores their motivations for doing so and the trials they face. A majority of the women who open up to the crew seem to have taken on the job to support their families, and most already have children of their own. One woman is carrying her second surrogate pregnancy to raise enough money to send her children to an English speaking school, and another is saving to build a three-room house so that her family no longer have to have seven people sleeping in the one room.
During their pregnancies, the women must live together in a centre that houses up to 80 surrogate mothers. The entire operation is run by Dr. Nayna Patel, a fierce matriarch who monitors and records how the women spend their money. Dr. Patel claims she is a passionate feminist and that surrogacy is one woman helping another. Her clinic has provided her with a comfortable home and education for her children, as well as her fair share of notoriety due to the controversy her work attracts. She aims to expand her business and provide her employees with training they can use to become self sufficient once their surrogacy days are over.
The film is very engaging because it confronts viewers with a difficult ethical conundrum. The wealth of the couples flying in to collect their children makes a nauseating juxtaposition with India’s abundant poverty and the squalid conditions that many of the women and their families live in outside of the centre. While the $8000 US they’re paid for their service does have the ability to positively change their lives, it is difficult to separate their work from the obvious disparity in the standard of living between them and those who employ them.
So is India’s booming surrogacy industry a means of empowering disadvantaged women to escape the cycle of poverty while providing childess couples with the family they’ve been dreaming of? Or is it wealthy foreigners exploiting the desperation of people born into seemingly inescapable destitution? Is Dr. Nayna Patel a feminist humanitarian providing women with the funds and training that could help them support their families or a controlling business owner hoping to squeeze everything possible out of a service few others can provide at such a low cost?
‘House of Surrogates’ raises a number of ethical questions about reproduction, wealth and poverty, as well as providing a fascinating glimpse into a practice surrounded by controversy but rarely given media portrayal at its ground level. Although it doesn’t feature any same sex parents or LGBT families, it does provide an engaging, thought provoking look at an issue that is relevant to any same sex attracted person who hopes to one day start a family.
House of Surrogates screens on ABC2 on Sunday July 27th at 8:30pm
Sophie Joske
