The assisted reproduction industry may have brought smiles to the faces to many a childless couple but there is a huge risk of genetic thefts, human and ova trafficking and hyper-medicalisation affecting the woman, warns a new book.
In 'Politics Of The Womb: The Perils of IVF, Surrogacy & Modified Babies', author Pinki Virani presents a complete picture of what is sold to desperately wanting-to-be parents as miraculous medico-technology.
The book, published by Penguin Random House, states the factual failure rates of IVF and other reproductive techniques, points to the futility of such artificial assistance if a father passes on his genetic infertility to his IVF-child, and uncovers the 'IVF package' which becomes the woman and her unborn, through which a newly born baby is denied colostrum - its fundamental foremost-hour feed - from breastmilk.
It also tracks the death of commercial surrogates; the emotional exploitativeness of female egg-freezing; the destruction of humaneness around "donations" of sperm and ova; the genetic thefts; the rampant human and ova trafficking; the moral compass-lost procedures behind "designer offspring"; and the very real risk of broken babies and breaking mothers, according to the publishers.
According to Virani, who has previously authored books like 'Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India', 'Once Was Bombay', 'Aruna's Story: The True Story Of A Rape and Its Aftermath' and 'Deaf Heaven', poverty is not the sole reason why young women are selling their eggs, easy-money is.
"Easier, at any rate, than renting out their vulvae as call girls; more discreet, taking comparatively much less time, than renting out their uterus as commercial surrogates. College-going girls are doing it for the 'extra cash' as are aspiring starlets and models; young women studying to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, air hostesses, these are the diva donors. It's all done under-the-radar..."
She claims infertile women availing of IVF are "stimulated with high doses of synthesised hormones to produce a larger number of eggs for harvesting for their own embryos.
"Egg-selling women are sought out - by the agents, some of whom were once sellers themselves - because they are fertile; proof of this tends to be glossed over in medically mysterious ways since not all oocyte sellers have children of their own.
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