美国国家公共电台 NPR Why Some Of India's Surrogate Moms Are Full Of Regret

Why Some Of India's Surrogate Moms Are Full Of Regret 

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Couples who can't conceive a child look for all kinds of alternatives in order to become parents, including surrogacy, when you pay a woman to carry and give birth to your baby. India is preparing to ban this practice altogether. As NPR's Julie McCarthy reports, that move could protect women who serve as surrogates from exploitation, but it could also take an economic toll².

JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE³: Isha Devi hails from Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, built by a grieving king for a beloved queen. Isha now lives three hours and a world away from any such romantic ideals. Renting a small, dingy⁴ room, this mother of a 12- and 14-year-old has come to the outskirts⁵ of Delhi to live close to her fertility clinic. Isha is 30 and six months pregnant with someone else's twins. She groans⁶, shifts uncomfortably in her pink floral sari and says she became a surrogate to expunge⁷ a family debt.

ISHA DEVI: (Speaking Hindi).

MCCARTHY: "I would never have done this, but my husband had a terrible accident when his rickshaw slid under a bus. He fractured his hip⁸ and can't work. That was our only income," she says. Her husband earned $5 a day. His medical bills are $3,000. She is paid $160 a month during the pregnancy⁹ with a lump sum after the birth. But Isha says the stipend¹⁰ is too small to pay off the debt and buy the food her doctors recommend she eat. The petite woman with a basketball-size bulge¹¹ in her stomach says she's often hungry.

ANOOP GUPTA: Good morning. Yeah, you're calling from which place? London.

MCCARTHY: That's Isha's doctor, Anoop Gupta. His clientele is international, mostly couples using IVF to conceive their own child. Gupta's surrogacy practice inside his fertility clinic, one of Delhi's largest, is small. And embryologist Gupta says he performed the first surrogacy in 1997.

So you've been doing this for 19 years.

GUPTA: But it has picked up. Like, last 10 years we are doing quite a bit. See, we have 650 surrogacies delivered by now. And we have a lot of gay couples coming. Then a lot of single females also we have done.

MCCARTHY: No law governs surrogacy in India, but the one the government proposes bars gays, singles, foreigners and Indian couples married under five years from commissioning a surrogate. The bill limits the practice to altruistic¹² cases where a woman would provide the services of her womb for free. Gupta says the going rate today is 1 million rupees, or $14,000. Surrogates such as Isha receive less than half that - doctors, agents, lawyers, labs and technicians all get a cut. Still, Gupta considers such surrogates well-compensated and blanches¹³ at criticism that India's poorest women are being taken advantage of.

GUPTA: Even if they don't do surrogacy, they will get pregnant themself. So they get pregnant, pregnant, pregnant - that's it. Now, if they get an opportunity to help somebody who is childless and they help themself with the money which they can never think of in lifetime, nobody has been exploited.

MCCARTHY: Manasi Mishra disagrees and says the industry is, quote, "run by haves to exploit the have-nots."

MANASI MISHRA: And this pregnancy is precious - the mother is not.

MCCARTHY: Mishra is with the Center for Social Research and conducted studies on 200 surrogates in 2010 and 2012. She found many were cheated out of money and deceived about the procedures they must undergo. She also discovered some couples had commissioned more than one surrogate to boost their chances, with the less desirable fetuses¹⁴ eliminated through a pill-induced miscarriage¹⁵. Mishra says the unwitting surrogate gets blamed.

MISHRA: She doesn't know it is an induced abortion¹⁶. She has been made to believe that it is because of her carelessness that she has aborted¹⁷.

MCCARTHY: Mishra says Indian surrogates like Isha typically have no more than a fifth-grade education. They often cannot read contracts drafted in English. It makes a mockery of consent, she says.

KARUNA NUNDY: I think informed consent is something that's absolutely essential.

MCCARTHY: Karuna Nundy is a Supreme¹⁸ Court advocate.

NUNDY: The information that's lacking is that what does the contract really mean? What do I do if all of these promises aren't panning out the way that you promise they are?

MCCARTHY: A decision on whether to ban or to regulate surrogacy can only be taken, Nundy says, after hearing from the women whose bodies are being rented in the first place.

NUNDY: So if you've got a bunch of, you know, commercial surrogates who are saying that we need a ban, you have a ban. If you have a bunch of commercial surrogates say, no, I want to do this, but it's not fair, I need more money, then that points to a regulated industry.

MCCARTHY: Back in her room, Isha Devi says she would hope to meet the woman whose twins she is carrying. That's not likely. Doctors discourage it. It's one more uncertainty¹⁹ in a life bundled with them. But Isha has no doubt about one thing.

DEVI: (Speaking Hindi).

MCCARTHY: "Whatever I'm going through," she says, "nobody should go through." Julie McCarthy, NPR News, New Delhi.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 dingy   

adj.昏暗的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• It was a street of dingy houses huddled together. 这是一条挤满了破旧房子的街巷。
• The dingy cottage was converted into a neat tasteful residence.那间脏黑的小屋已变成一个整洁雅致的住宅。

5 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

• Our car broke down on the outskirts of the city.我们的汽车在市郊出了故障。
• They mostly live on the outskirts of a town.他们大多住在近郊。

6 groans   

n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦

参考例句：

• There were loud groans when he started to sing. 他刚开始歌唱时有人发出了很大的嘘声。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• It was a weird old house, full of creaks and groans. 这是所神秘而可怕的旧宅，到处嘎吱嘎吱作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 expunge   

v.除去，删掉

参考例句：

• He could not expunge the incident from his memory.他无法忘掉这件事。
• Remember that you can expunge anything you find undesirable.记住，你可以除去任何你发现令你讨厌的东西。

8 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

9 pregnancy   

n.怀孕，怀孕期

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
• Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。

10 stipend   

n.薪贴；奖学金；养老金

参考例句：

• The company is going to ajust my stipend from this month onwards.从这一个月开始公司将对我的薪金作调整。
• This sum was nearly a third of his total stipend.这笔钱几乎是他全部津贴的三分之一。

11 bulge   

n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀

参考例句：

• The apple made a bulge in his pocket.苹果把他口袋塞得鼓了起来。
• What's that awkward bulge in your pocket?你口袋里那块鼓鼓囊囊的东西是什么？

12 altruistic   

adj.无私的，为他人着想的

参考例句：

• It is superficial to be altruistic without feeling compassion.无慈悲之心却说利他，是为表面。
• Altruistic spirit should be cultivated by us vigorously.利他的精神是我们应该努力培养的。

13 blanches   

v.使变白( blanch的第三人称单数 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮

参考例句：

14 fetuses   

n.胎，胎儿( fetus的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• DNA was extracted from fetuses at mid-gestation, about 10 days past conception. DNA从受孕大约10天后的中期妊娠胚胎中提取。 来自互联网
• Brucellosis is a disease that causes fetuses to abort in cattle. 普鲁士菌病是一种可以导致牲畜胎儿夭折的疾病。 来自互联网

15 miscarriage   

n.失败，未达到预期的结果；流产

参考例句：

• The miscarriage of our plans was a great blow.计划的失败给我们以巨大的打击。
• Women who smoke are more to have a miscarriage.女性吸烟者更容易流产。

16 abortion   

n.流产，堕胎

参考例句：

• She had an abortion at the women's health clinic.她在妇女保健医院做了流产手术。
• A number of considerations have led her to have a wilful abortion.多种考虑使她执意堕胎。

17 aborted   

adj.流产的，失败的v.（使）流产( abort的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）（某事物）中止；（因故障等而）（使）（飞机、宇宙飞船、导弹等）中断飞行；（使）（飞行任务等）中途失败

参考例句：

• The rocket flight had to be aborted because of difficulties with computer. 因电脑出故障，这次火箭飞行只好中辍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They aborted the space flight finally. 他们最后中止了这次宇航飞行。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

19 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。