Surrogacy extends across the globe

India, a long time destination for outsourced American jobs, is now home to a growing industry that at first glance seems slightly bizzare.

American couples unable to naturally conceive, and those who have found difficulty in applying for adoption and other child rearing alternatives, are now going over seas to find surrogate mothers.

This phenomenon raises two questions. One regarding the social situation currently existing in America that would force such an arrangement to be made in the first place, and another that questions the ethics involved in the logistics that take place in many of these overseas surrogacy programs.

For years the gay community has spoken out against the limitations placed on "non-traditional" families when it comes to adopting and fostering children in America. While florida is the only state that bans gay adoption rights prejudice is widespread.

So gay couples, financially stable, living in loving homes that desire the basic instinctual experience of becoming a parent, are now forced to look overseas for solutions to the limitations placed on them at home.

Human rights issues arise when details of these surrogacy "agencies" are revealed. Many Indian surrogate mothers are poverty stricken, illiterate and desperate to support their own families. Women are artificially inseminated, receive medical treatment, stay out their pregnancies and deliver the surrogate children all on the premises of such organizations. They are sometimes not allowed to leave the alloted grounds during the process.

In a country with 25 percent of the population living below the poverty line, according to the CIA World Factbook, giving these women an opportunity to support their children seems positive, but through means in which they are seemingly renting out their bodies and kept captive during the process, ethical and human rights questions have to be raised, especially when currently little to no regulation exists.

Surrogacy can create miracles, giving the gift of life to couples that could otherwise not experience the joys of raising a family. Using this miracle to exploit women in foreign countries, beyond American laws, and without strong proof that each case does not violate basic human rights brings up extremely hard moral questions that the global community may now have to answer.