Surrogate Mothers: Womb for Rent

Abigail Haworth

The midday sun is ferociously hot outside the Akanksha Infertility Clinic, a scuffed concrete building in the small Indian city of Anand. Crammed into a single patch of shade by the gate, a stray cow and a family of beggars — caked so uniformly in dung-colored dust they resemble clay models — wait out the noontime heat. Inside, the lobby is jammed with barefoot female patients in circus-bright saris. Nurses in white Indian tunics scuttle among them, hollering out names and brandishing medical files. The air smells faintly of sweat and damp cement. On the walls, blurry photos of babies and newspaper clippings celebrate the clinic’s raison d’être: “The Cradle of the World” declares one headline. Read More…