Bizarre and strange were the words that came to mind when I first started reading this article…
Wendy Duncan and her husband Brian are white. Nineteen months ago, the Lincolnshire housewife gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, Indian daughter. Freya, brown-skinned and dark-eyed, is not a medical miracle after a long and fruitless quest through IVF and adoption, but the product of a booming industry in India that is offering embryos for adoption.
Am I missing something? Why would you want to adopt an Indian embryo when there’s plenty of Indian children to adopt?
Embryo adoption was the culmination of an 18-year journey for the Duncans during which their attempts to become parents were frustrated by nature and bureaucracy. Being white and already having a mixed-race child (from Mrs DuncanÂ’s previous relationship) meant that they failed the criteria for a normal adoption.
Seriously? Having a mixed-race child limits your chances of adopting in the UK? That’s racist!
IVF was unsuccessful and expensive for a family relying on Mr DuncanÂ’s income as a lorry driver. The older Mrs Duncan got, the less the chance there was of any fertility treatment working. Their options were running out until they stumbled upon a website for the Bombay clinic. It was an easy choice.
Their choice has already garnered some criticism:
Social workers in India fear that poor women are being exploited for “rent-a-womb” services such as surrogacy, banned for commercial gain in countries such as Australia and China. British health professionals, meanwhile, fear a rise in multiple births and an added strain on the Health Service. In Britain, embryo implants are limited to two at a time but in India, where there is no law governing fertility aid, doctors can insert up to five.
Duncan, however, is undeterred:
Their experience was so successful that they are returning next week to the Bombay fertility clinic that produced Freya, to try for a second child. Mrs Duncan, 41, plans to undergo the same procedure, which involves the implantation of up to five fertilised embryos into her womb. If successful, she will return to England after a short holiday knowing she is pregnant and give birth to another Indian baby.
Finally, this comment in the discussion section made me chuckle:
Not a bad idea. All of Western World can have brown and smart computer techies.
Thoughts, anyone? In case you’re wondering, I don’t have a serious problem with it. However, I don’t know if I’d feel the same way if the Duncans were not from the UK — where brown people are much more visible — but from some small town in Iowa. Then I might have some issues.
where brown people are much more visible — but from some small town in Iowa. Then I might have some issues.
sure, there are issues. but it isn’t like this is ever going to be an epidemic, so think the fact that these people really, really, really want to be parents, and don’t care about skin color compared to that, should trump all.
just checked, a few white racist sites are talking about them. rule of thumb, if they hate this, shouldn’t we like this? 🙂 though seriously, it is a personal decision. a race doesn’t raise a baby, a family does.
very true.
we have close family friends who are ‘indian’…they adopted a ‘white’ girl when she was 2 yrs old.. and raised her.. she is now in her mid 20’s.. went to INDIA for medical school (by choice!)..and is likely more indian…then most of us (myself included..)..
I’m just shocked that having a mixed-race baby disqualifies you for adoption. I was with you–why not adopt instead–but why would having a mixed-race baby disqualify you? Anybody know?
That’s not true. There must be some other criteria involved, possibly on her side, that either put her far down the adoption list or off it altogether.
Adoption agencies in the UK are hyper politically correct so the mixed race baby being a bar to adoption is most likely sloppy journalism. Agencies will always give preference to suitable couples of the ethnic background of the child — it may well be that she insisted she wanted to adopt a mixed race, black or Asian child only and was told she would have to join a queue or something along those lines.
In my home town a white couple adopted a 2 girls who were sisters from Sri Lanka and those 2 girls ended up being honor students.
Wasn’t there a story last year on this website about girls from India being adopted by families in Minnesota, and about there 1st trip back to India, to the orphange from where they were adopted.
As a gora who’s looked into adopting an Indian baby a few times, I’ve noticed many of the agencies in India who wouldn’t let me adopt because I’m white. It makes me sad when I think about the stories I’ve seen about children growing up in extreme poverty, or, for example, girl babies being murdered, to think that there’s such a stupid roadblock to adoption for some as skin color, but it exists.
Maybe those agencies just prefer for the children they deal with to be adopted by Indian families Maurice, don’t take it personally — plus there are many many Indian children who are adopted abroad so you just need to find the right agencies.
It’s interesting to me that adoption is such a rigorous process, but embryo adoption is not (at least, from what the article says).
I wonder if the person in the original news-story might not have been able to adopt because she already had a child, and could presumably also have another – than that her child was ‘mixed-race’. Also, it is possible that having ‘mixed-race’ children in the UK is correlated with various other undesirable attributes from the agency’s pov, such as low income, job-instability, etc. Somebody on SM a few threads ago was talking about how, although Caribs are ‘assimilated’ in the UK, in terms of mixed race marriages etc, that does not mean they are doing well by SES measures, in either the first or the second generation. Also, I do not know how much weight to give to Maurice’s anecdote, since Indian kids adopted by ‘white’ parents in the US certainly do exist.
if you read the article her ‘mixed-race’ child is half-arab. just to be clear.
Losing our baby girl at 23 weeks, I can see my self going through this if I’m not able to conceive again! We are “Indian” but even if we weren’t, I think we would adopt an embryo…..may the embroyo be white, black, red, or brown. I agree, a race does not raise a baby, a FAMILY does.
At the risk of opening a can of worms, it might be an issue of what the Indian government considers to be the start of a life.
It’s interesting to me that adoption is such a rigorous process, but embryo adoption is not (at least, from what the article says).
I was just thinking the same thing. It’s funny too that most of the comments here are focused on the mixed race issue, and not so much the embryo buying issue.
Probably been discussed to death before! 😉
I think she meant that you can’t adopt if you already have a child(?)
I shudder when i think of the women in this situation. What conditions have forced them donate their embryos? How much are they getting paid? How much concern will a doctor show for the health and safety of a poor homeless woman?
I think that we should consider not only those people who benefit from this procedure (the Duncans), but also those who may be harmed or exploited. I wish that the article delved further into this aspect of the issue…
Probably a little less connection with the issue here, but it does remind me of a brown women physiotherapist I met professionally. During our session,I casually asked her where she is from (and I meant which state in America) and response I got was something like “Oh I look Indian, but I was adopted by white family. So I am white, you see my husband is also white”. The only thing I could say was “Congratulations”.
Great article/issue to bring to our attention. Just curious though, why would it bother you more if the couple were from Iowa than from Lincolnshire?
I also totally cannot understand why people would “adopt an embryo when thereÂ’s plenty of Indian children to adopt.” I guess it just has something to do with my worldview — I also can’t understand why people would spend $20K-$50K for fertility treatments and IVF with low chance of success rather than adopt a child of whatever ethnicity. Something about the “parental blood bond” thing (a neurosis I apparently don’t have). Maybe gestating and birthing the embryo is seen as the same thing — a bonding issue that makes the child feel “more yours” than just adopting an infant. I still am militantly pro-adoption.
The price bit is interesting: “The Duncans spent £8,000 on one course of IVF in Britain. Their treatment in Bombay cost £3,000.”
I can understand Indian govt being very leery of exploitative “rent-a-womb” with traditional surrogacy, etc., but (and I know I’m opening a can of worms here)… how bad do people feel that egg harvesting is? I know that there are some issues with any person (especially of poorer economic class) being paid for human tissue, whether it be blood, eggs, etc… but isn’t egg harvesting minimally invasive, and if a woman can be paid for that, how terrible is it? It’s not quite akin on an ethical scale to paying the poor to donate a kidney or half their liver for a price, right? I would almost rather see someone being paid for her eggs rather than being forced to work in a sweatshop (though being forced to select neither option would be best, of course).
This bit seems exaggerated and ridiculous: “British health professionals, meanwhile, fear a rise in multiple births and an added strain on the Health Service.” I’m not sure that’s really borne out, and they don’t really quote any “health professionals” who espouse that view. As someone mentioned, it’s not as if millions of people will be taking this option… And if it were really a huge concern about the strain on National Health Service, the govt would have more of a vested interest in creating a policy (which would never happen) limiting the number of children that couples could have, period. Or preventing Catholics from immigrating, or anything similarly stupid. I feel like this “strain on National Health” was thrown into the article as a red herring “con” argument.
My wife and myself are planning to adopt a child from India. The process is LONG and laborious and is restricted to people of Indian origin primarily. Anybody who does not have a trace of Indian ethnicity is 4th down the list(unless you are a celebrity). The process takes 2 years, is expensive and a real pain. So the process to adopt an Indian kid is not as easy as most people think.
is restricted to people of Indian origin primarily. Anybody who does not have a trace of Indian ethnicity is 4th down the list(unless you are a celebrity).
people should stay with their own kind. that’s why pure white babies are never adopted out to coloreds, or at least someone with a drop of non-white ancestry.
Is there a doctor in the house? Indian women aren’t selling their embryos; they are selling eggs–just like Ivy League-educated American women get paid to do. Presumably, the British couple had an IVF procedure, using an egg from an Indian donor, fertilized by Mr. Duncan’s sperm. So the resultant embryo is partially the couple’s own genetic creation–but the article doesn’t say this. This procedure is very common, and the fact that the eggs happened to have come from a Bombay clinic really isn’t that strange.
Razib, is this your own view, or are you paraphrasing the view of the adoption agencies. If it is your own view, are you for real?
Oh, brother. I know this topic has been discussed in a million places ad nauseam, but…. whatever. Feel free to keep spitting into the wind.
Perhaps the reason the British couple took this route is because technically, they cannot “adopt” an Indian baby. Indian law doesn’t allow non-PIOs to adopt children. However, Non-PIOs have to take guardianship of the child to legally take it out of the contry and process the adoption in the parent’s country. I don;t know about British law. Does anyone know if parents can bring a foreign baby into the country and adopt the baby? US has a visa called IR-4 that allows couples to bring children into the country and undergo adoption in the US. Does the UK have something like that?
Is there a doctor in the house?
yes. there is.. it’s the egg they sell.. just like the ads in the college papers preston..
We’ve discussed a related issue before, how India is becoming popular for surrogacy. I believe that in some of those cases the ovum is coming from a local source as well.
kusala, i’m parodying. i find the indian government’s emphasis on non-immigrant “indian origin” (that is, browns born abroad who weren’t born in india) somewhat irritating.
blockquote>So the resultant embryo is partially the couple’s own genetic creation–but the article doesn’t say this. This procedure is very common, and the fact that the eggs happened to have come from a Bombay clinic really isn’t that strange.
You know, this just makes me realise further how this really is a sloppily written article. The fact that she already has a mixed-race child is not a reason for her to be turned down for adoption — it simply would not happen. There must have been some other reason for this, and the fact that she already has a child may be one reason for her being relegated down the list of suitable applicants. Mentioning that the reason for this was that she had a mixed race child seems like spin to me, of the kind that says, ‘political correctness has gone mad’…. The Sunday Times pushes the line of the ‘lunacies’ of multiculturalism and matters of race, and the angle on this case does seem to be informed excessively by the fact that many white couples will be giving birth to half Indian children if this does become a regular and popular medical procedure.
how bad do people feel that egg harvesting is?
I don’t know what the SM zeitgeist on this issue is, but at the risk of being in the minority, I don’t see it as being entirely a bad thing. Women in the US get their eggs harvested too. In fact, there were stories about ads in the Harvard newspaper asking Ivy-league educated women to get their eggs harvested for money.
On some level, it’s merely a commerical transaction that benefits both parties. It’s arguable whether this is totally an arms length transaction though, and that’s probably where the ethical gray areas are. Are the women who are coming forward to India mostly middle class women looking to make a few thousand extra rupees? Or is this just another way to exploit the poor female underclass in India?
I had a few friends here in the States who were actually considering being egg donors. They decided not to go through with it, not because of the moral issues but because they apparently would have had to take some hormone treatments that they were uncomfortable with (docs, does that sound plausible?). As long as the Indian donors are actually giving their informed consent to this process, I don’t see a problem with it.
At the same time, a person of color has unique barriers growing up. I would hope that any white adopting parents would try to understand those barriers and take them seriously (regardless of the race or national origin of the child). Some of the proud “colorblind” rhetoric I hear coming out of liberal white people would make me cringe if it were coming out of the mouths of parents who adopted a non-white child.
Somebody suggested it might be ‘minimally invasive’. I don’t know myself, but I seem to remember it involves some kind of vacuum suction pump inserted into the wherever which then pulls them out. I don’t think it is completely pain-free. Others can elaborate. I doubt, however, if it is as simple as sperm donation, which is the exact male equivalent. I mean, nobody asks about the ethics of that!
Really? I remember they were talking about a moratorium on foreign adoptions a couple of years ago after the post-tsunami trafficking scandal broke. Did they actually implement it?
AFAIK, a child has to be offered to three Indian families before an overseas desi or a non-Indian can have a go. You used to be able to find all the rules and legal details on the relevant gorrment website. Trafficking concerns are understandable but there’s still a lot of knee-jerk suspicion of “foreigners” adopting because, guess what, they are better able to pay to speed up the ridiculously long and bureaucratic procedures you enforce while the child rots in an orphanage losing precious developmental time. And of course the assumption is that you need to double-check foreigners as possible traffickers, but desis would neeevvvver do that, oh no.
There are roadblocks to some desi NRIs adopting India-born children too, fwiw. This isn’t much of a concern for 1st and 2nd geners, but a non-US citizen desi who really wants to adopt can’t really do it. Citizenship is not a bar to adoption, but the immigration regs do not allow the adopted children to be brought over immediately, unless a citizen is doing the adoption.
There is a lot more xenophobia surrounding foreign adoption these days, and not just in India. Our friends recently adopted two children from Russia, and the agency in Russia told them the children had various non-serious medical complications, which turned out to be completely untrue. Apparently, the agencies in Russia do this so that they can show the local authorities that only the “defective” kids are put up for foreign adoption!
I actually considered “donating” (read = selling) my eggs a few years ago, after I broke my leg and had $$$$ medical bills to pay. Although I had a bid up to $30k for my eggs, I decided not to go through the procedure because while they tell you it’s minimally invasive, it can actually be quite painful.
You have to take a series of hormone shots everyday for several months that make you ovulate multiple (20-30) eggs at a time, so your ovaries are working overtime and you’re literally bursting with eggs which is supposed to be painful. And then the harvesting procedure involves a large needle that they use to suck those eggs out. OUCH.
What i think is interesting is the process through which they value your eggs. When I went through the initial process, there was a serious lack of Asian (and Jewish) egg donors, so I got a $5k premium just for being asian. Add in another $5k for going to an Ivy League school, another $1,000 for every 100 points over 1400 I got on the SAT, and another $1,000 or so for every IQ point over 130, and you can make some serious cash.
I doubt the donors in India are being adequately compensated for their eggs.
No. But having a child limits your chances of adopting in the UK because childless couples are first served.
Like they say, “Ladies, it’s not always about you (race)”
I think it’s the bond created in the first bit of a child’s life. The more time a child spends with her mother, especially, the closer the bond. Perhaps the parents want to preserve that, and therefore go the embryo route.
Exactly. The mention that the journalist makes of the child being mixed-race is part of the Sunday Times spin I reckon — either that or very sloppy writing. The way it is makes it seem that the lady is being discriminated against by fiendish piolitical correctness monsters (or that the system is racist) — the previous would be in line with the Sunday Times’ take on British society and race issues generally.
SP # 32
This link here has Some material on relevant rules for adoption by US Citizens, paragraph four talks about India Adoption laws prohibiting adoptions by foreigners.
This is the relevant information on whether foreign adoption is barred in India (from the link in #38).
“In addition, it is important to note that Indian law does not permit foreigners to adopt Indian children, but rather, to receive guardianship (custody) that allows the prospective adoptive parents to depart India with the child and later adopt him/her in the parentsÂ’ home country.”
Legally speaking, I suppose a foreigner cannot adopt a child in India. But you can formally adopt the same child once you have brought the child back to the UK, US, etc. All you have to do is assume legal guardianship/custody of the child. Not really a prohibition.
Sorry if this sounds dense, but after all this, is there any, ANY concrete proof whatsoever that a high IQ or any other measure of “intelligence” accrues to someone’s genetic offspring (or the inverse)?? This type of logic is mind-boggling, but maybe I’m missing some key data…
It really depends on the parent’s country of citizensip. If a country doesn’t allow bringing a foreign child into the country, and doesn’t process the adoption of a foreign child, then there is no way citizens of that country can adopt an Indian child. Fortunately, the US allows citizens, using the IR-4 visa, to bring foreign orphans into the country and process adoption in the US legal system. So, it might be difficult for US citizens to adopt Indian children, it’s not impossible. If the US were to stop giving IR-4 visas, then it would be impossible for Americans to adopt Indians.
I don’t know what the relevant law in UK is. DOes the UK allow citizens to tak guardianship of Indian children and bring them into the UK?. Depending on how the UK law is written, it may be impossible for British citizens to adopt Indian children.
kusla at 19.
Stevie at 36. I
Politics aside, I can offer with certainty that the process and the chemistry of pregnancy totally direct the mother’s ability and inclination to bond. Probably something similar goes on with the child within. Chickens being easy types to study for dance and psychology both, it has been determined long since that hens mutter and cluck and croon to their chicks during hatching, which fact is now commonly used as the basis for diabolical experimentation used to study attachment. I can swear to it that my kids let me know how they were feeling at all times, causing me to respond so as to normalize things that were bothering them/ When I was housing my first, I only became aware of this kind of communication after being four months into it– i.e., there’s learning involved. So, yes, I think in terms of bonding and knowing and stuff it’s better to adopt an embryo than a baby.
This is bizarre! The fact that there is a clinic selling embryos should cause the imbroglio not issues of race, finances and Indian laws regarding adoption. Having lived in India for over 20 years, I should not surprised, in India, human life has no value. By this, they have simply reached a new low.
I first heard this in America!
–that’s normalize/rectify out of kilter things, like loud noises, sudden movement, the way I was sitting ad much else– an onging thing. Swear.
Pagla:
You’re right. The law is permissive, only as long as the parents’ country allows formal adoption of foreign children.
I hadn’t considered the possibility that the UK might have laws or regulations that bar assuming custody of a foreign child and then adopting that child formally in the UK.
Naina,
In case you did not know it already, the doc who administered the IVF/Embryo-donor treatment (Times article), has a blog.
It wouldn’t have bothered you knowing that your biological children were out there somewhere, living their lives, with no connection to you whatsoever? You wouldn’t even know any details about them? But yet they’d still be YOUR kids after all, regardless. This is one aspect of egg/sperm donation that I just can’t relate to. It would drive me crazy knowing I had a son/daughter out there and I had no contact with them.
This is bizarre! The fact that there is a clinic selling embryos should cause the imbroglio not issues of race, finances and Indian laws regarding adoption. Having lived in India for over 20 years, I should not surprised, in India, human life has no value. By this, they have simply reached a new low.
Clearly, an exaggerated mail that came from having misunderstood the topic. For more info, please read up on Virginia Postrel’s blog for extensive details on her drive to make paid kidney donations legal. Her blog has links to her articles in reputed publications.
..oh, and Postrel practised what she said. She donated her own kidney to another blogger.