The dark side of one Mexican state's boom in surrogate pregnancies
Women abused and cheated, eggs stolen as unscrupulous Mexican agencies exploit surge in commercial pregnancies after curbs elsewhere
Five days after her caesarean section, Nancy boarded a night bus in the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa and made the 10-hour journey back to her home in the capital. Instead of a baby, she nursed a wad of bills buried in a blue handbag she never let out of her sight.
The cash was the final instalment of her 150,000 peso (HK$87,000) fee to be a surrogate mother for a gay couple from San Francisco. After a traumatic year that included being all but abandoned by the agency supposedly looking after her, Nancy was not sure it had been worth it.
"I just wanted to get my money, go home, rest and forget about it all," said the 24-year-old, in her tiny apartment in a poor barrio of Mexico City. "And now the money is all gone."
Nancy's story says much about the Mexican state of Tabasco's emergence as the world's most dynamic new centre of international surrogacy, fuelled by the tightening of restrictions in other countries such as India and Thailand.
While some Mexican "surrogacy journeys" progress smoothly, there are stories of unscrupulous or mismanaged agencies stealing money and eggs, subjecting pregnant women to psychological abuse, and cutting corners on payments. There is also evidence that many surrogates are recruited without rigorous screening of their mental and physically suitability.
Surrogacy agencies say they offer a legitimate service, but in reality, all operate in a legal grey area because surrogacy in Tabasco is legally required to be altruistic.
"There are good agencies and bad agencies," said a nurse from Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco, who visits surrogates at home and in agency-run houses. The nurse, who did not want her name published, said many were essentially left to fend for themselves. "They all make the same promises," she said of the agencies. "Some keep them and others don't."
Commercial gestational surrogacy, in which a woman is paid to carry a baby to whom she has no genetic link, has been an accepted practice in some US states since the late 1980s. But with costs typically topping US$100,000, medical tourism agencies have found a profitable niche coordinating much cheaper services in the few countries where surrogacy is permitted. For years India was the world centre of surrogacy tourism, but strict legislation at the end of 2012 restricted surrogacy clients to married heterosexual couples.
Within months, international surrogacy agencies switched their focus to Tabasco. Agencies set up bases in Cancun, 720km from Villahermosa. The city was already a centre of medical tourism.
Advertising primarily on the internet, with a focus on the gay market, the agencies offered networks of donors, clinics and women willing to rent their wombs, all for less than half the usual US prices. Agencies have multiplied across the state, as well as in Mexico City, and have recently reported a surge of inquiries from Australia, perhaps a result of Thailand's crackdown on surrogacy because of a case in which a surrogate mother claimed an Australian couple had refused to take their baby because he had Down's syndrome.
"This is going to take off," said Carlos Rosillo, who has set up an agency called Mexico Surrogacy. "At the moment there are maybe 10 to 15 surrogate babies being born a month, but when it is that amount every day the real problems will start," he said.
The industry is already dealing with the fallout from claims that Planet Hospital, a Cancun pioneer, cheated dozens of clients out of large deposits for procedures that were incomplete or carried out improperly.
