Surrogate baby allowed to leave India for Japan	November 1, 2008

JAIPUR, India - A baby girl born from a surrogate mother will finally be able to join her biological father in Japan after spending the first three months of her life trapped by India’s notorious bureaucracy, the infant’s grandmother said Friday.

The saga of the girl, Manji, has exposed the pitfalls of international commercial surrogacy—or what has been called “wombs for rent“—in which surrogate mothers are impregnated in vitro with the egg and sperm of couples from all over the world who are
unable to conceive on their own.

“I am very happy that after much delay the baby has been able to get a visa,” Emiko Yamada, 70, the girl’s grandmother, told reporters in the western city of Jaipur, adding that she will leave for Japan on Saturday.

Unable to have their own baby, Ikufumi Yamada, 48, and his then-wife Yuki Yamada came to India where commercial surrogacy has been legal since 2002. They signed an agreement with an Indian woman who was impregnated with an egg from a donor, fertilized by sperm from Yamada.

According to Indian law, the couple must legally adopt the baby after birth and take it home.

But then the system broke down.

The Yamadas divorced shortly before the birth and Yuki Yamada said she did not want the baby. Even though Ikufumi Yamada was her biological father he could not take her back to Japan because India does not allow single men to adopt.

With no adoption papers, the baby was unable to obtain travel documents or a visa.

The grandmother, who flew to India and has been taking care of Manji since her birth on July 25, took the case all the way to India’s Supreme Court, which issued an order to provide the baby with a temporary travel document despite not being legally adopted. The baby then received a visa from Japan’s embassy.

Commercial surrogacy is growing in India, where it is considerably cheaper than in Western countries. While there are no reliable numbers for such pregnancies nationwide, doctors work with surrogates in virtually every major city.

Surrogate mothers, often poor women with little education, earn between $4,500 and $5,000, plus all medical costs, for the service.

Most couples end up paying the surrogacy clinic about $10,000 for the entire procedure, including fertilization, the fee to the mother and medical expenses.

“The happiest moment will be when the baby sees her father,” Emiko Yamada said, speaking through a translator.