Want a Baby? Gay or Straight, Come to India, Says Doc

Want a Baby? Gay or Straight, Come to India, Says Doc
By ASHFAQUE SWAPAN
indiawest.comFebruary 12, 2009 02:09:00 PM 

After outsourcing software, customer service, back office work, here's the latest trend: Infertile gay or straight couples can outsource the complicated business of having a baby to India, and what's more, like all outsourcing options, they can get more bang for their buck.

Gay couples in the U.S., who are struggling for marital rights here, had an opportunity recently to explore the possibility of fulfilling another dream close to their hearts but fraught with financial, legal and bureaucratic hurdles — the possibility of their own child with state-of-the-art care and bargain basement prices — in India.

In four seminars Jan. 26 and Jan. 27 — two in New York City and two in Los Angeles — Dr. Gautam N. Allahbadia, M.D., director of Rotunda-The Center for Human Reproduction, a world-renowned infertility clinic at Bandra, Mumbai — walked interested couples through the procedure towards fulfilling their dream of having a baby. The seminars were sponsored by PlanetHospital, a company that promotes medical tourism

In a phone interview with India-West, Allahbadia noted that his clinic offered an excellent way for all people — gay, straight, single or married — to have a baby

"I feel this is the affordable way to complete your family, because in the U.S. the cost is $100,000-$150,000 for this procedure. In India we do it for $25,000. The difference is huge in costs," Allahbadia told India-West just before addressing a seminar in Los Angeles.

"Even if you add another $10,000 to this (for air fare and extra expenses), and you make it $35,000, even then it is cheaper."

The quality of care his clinic offered was as good as any U.S. clinic, he said. "Last year, 2008, our success rates were way above the U.S. average," he added.

To date, Allahbadia has helped 40 gay couples have children. He has also helped another 60 straight couples.

"I am doing assisted reproduction in India now from 1996," he said. He explained that in 2005 legal provisions were relaxed to make it easier for gay couples to have children.

"In 2005 the Indian government allowed us to treat single fathers and same-sex couples. We started doing this from 2005. Since 2005 there's been no problem. It's only increasing," Allahbadia said. "We've now treated patients from over 19 countries."

In the case of gay couples, the procedure of having a baby is simplest for lesbian couples.

"With lesbian couples, they don't have to take a circuitous route," the doctor said. "Lesbian couples just come to us, we do a donor insemination, and that's it. That's the simplest thing. For a gay couple, it's different. You need to have two individual women, one donating eggs and the other lending her uterus for nine months."

Allahbadia clarified that the procedure offered was not adoption, it involved having a baby that had an actual genetic link with the parent. Patients are "creating their own babies using their own sperm (or ovum) and Indian gestational mothers," he told India-West. "There is no adoption anywhere."

The doctor said that his seminars in the U.S. have been useful for those who attended. "It was nice, because . . . over the phone they don't really see the doctor in flesh and blood . . . there are always some who have never come to India and wonder what the doctors there will be like, so it was a different experience here, (where) they could talk to me," he said. "I had a thorough grilling for 35-40 minutes after the talk. People were expressing their doubts about how the actual procedure was going to go through. It was quite fruitful, I believe."

The seminars were sponsored by PlanetHospital, a company co-founded in 2002 by Indian American entrepreneur Rudy Rupak.

Rupak told India-West that PlanetHospital had brought Allahbadia to make U.S. people more aware of affordable, quality options elsewhere .

"He has been helping a lot of couples — gay, straight, otherwise — become parents, and I figured that people in the U.S. should know about this guy, and those who are looking to have children without having the bureaucracy and morass of adoption in this country and the expense of it — we are providing a viable and affordable option. This is what our company does."

"We were the first company in the medical tourism space . . . we've been offering affordable and quality medical treatments from around the world, and that's basically our modus operandi," he said. "We are in 17 different countries around the world."

Post your comments.
Comments using inappropriate language will not be posted. Indiawest reserves the right to re-publish comments into "Letters to the Editor" in which case, we reserve the right to edit comments for length and style. If you would like to write a letter to our editor, please click on Send Letters to Editor under About Us in the top navigation bar.