What Is Meant By Surrogacy?

By Author: Nikki Bains
Total Articles: 9
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Surrogacy is a medical procedure provided to childless couples or couples not wanting to or unable to produce kids on their own. Surrogacy makes use of an unrelated female who, for a fee accepts human eggs or sperms or fertilized eggs on behalf of another woman and delivers a healthy child.

The surrogacy path to children has in recent years, gained popularity due to standardization of the procedures and processes involved. Every aspect connected with surrogacy including the fees has been standardized and these days you can expect a high level of professionalism.

With professionalism comes the service provider. World over, there are hundreds of surrogacy service providers and most of these are located in Asia.

The Asian surrogacy centers cater mostly to non-Asian clients hence the standards they adopt are quite high. By local standards the fees are quite high but by ...
... Western standards the fees are very reasonable.

Surrogacy procedure

1. In the first procedure, human eggs are obtained either from the female person of the client couple or, from a donor. The egg donor could also be the surrogate mom herself.

2. The eggs are fertilized in vitro with the sperms obtained from the male of the of the client couple or, from a donor.

3. The fertilized human embryo is transferred into the surrogate mom and she carries the resultant pregnancy to term. If the eggs and sperm are obtained from the clients themselves, the baby so born will not only have the same features as the clients but will also be genetically related to the clients.
4. Some surrogacy centers allow the client to bring donor eggs or sperm from foreign (non-Asian) egg / sperm banks. Other Asian surrogacy centers are currently offering a choice of Asian and non-Asian human eggs / sperms.

Selecting a Gestational surrogate mother

The surrogate mom is not randomly selected. She is carefully selected from amongst hundreds of willing surrogate moms.

In Asia, screening test for willing surrogate mom does generally follow these criteria:

1. The surrogate mother has to be of legal age but no more than 35 years old
2. Has previously delivered healthy children of her own
3. Has had no miscarriages during previous pregnancy
4. Has received some education
5. Has pleasant features and a calm personality
6. Is currently physically fit and healthy
7. Understands the surrogacy terms

The selected surrogate mom will then have to undergo a physical and comprehensive medical examination.

The intending parents (clients) have to sign a legal agreement that covers fees, insurance and the acceptance of the child when born.

The clients are entitled to all medical reports and screen tests including previous medical history of the surrogate mom. They are also entitled to meet the Gestational Surrogates mom and approve / disapprove the surrogate mom. In the event of the latter, a different surrogate mom will be arranged – the surrogate center will usually have the names of hundreds of willing surrogate moms in their data banks.