Surrogacy: Act to end our women's exploitation

In Kenya, surrogate mothers are paid between Sh200,000 and Sh1 million per pregnancy, while surrogate mothers in America earn about Sh10 million per pregnancy. [iStockphoto]

The story of an abandoned Kenyan woman who was tricked into a Sh35,000 monthly payment as a surrogate mother should goad the government into action to protect vulnerable Kenyan women.

Surrogacy is the instance where a woman enters into an agreement to carry a pregnancy for another woman and hand over the child at birth. But while it is legal and done professionally in other countries, Kenya has unfortunately become a hunting ground for foreign cartels who exploit desperate Kenyan women pushed to the wall by poverty.

In Kenya, surrogate mothers are paid between Sh200,000 and Sh1 million per pregnancy, while surrogate mothers in America earn about Sh10 million per pregnancy. Sadly, when things go wrong in Kenya, volunteers end up being abandoned.

There is a parallel in the surrogacy saga in the illegal kidney trade scandal in an Eldoret-based hospital that shocked the country last year. Kenyans were tricked into selling their kidneys cheaply, completely unaware of the health implications and many are paying the price today.

Surrogate mothers are going through the same pain because many are unaware of what they were committing to due to secrecy. What makes this crisis even more horrifying are reports by anti-trafficking organisations like the Counter Human Trafficking Trust East Africa, which suspects that some babies born through surrogacy are being shipped abroad for organ harvesting.

This shadowy network operating on Kenyan soil must be stopped immediately. It baffles that even with the resources at its disposal, the government watches silently as women get stripped of basic protections. Some of the women who sign up as surrogate mothers are not even allowed to keep a copy of their contracts and are not permitted legal representation.

The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill currently before the Senate gives hope to such women, but it must be strengthened, particularly around disclosure requirements. All surrogacy contracts must be registered and the mothers permitted to have independent legal counsel. Women must receive full copies of all agreements before signing anything.

Where the government issues permits, medical facilities offering surrogacy services must undergo periodic inspection to ensure they follow the rules and operate above board. These clinics must be legally bound to reveal to the surrogate mother who the parties in the contract are. Service providers operating on social media platforms without physical offices must be smoked out and permanently closed for exposing unsuspecting women to not just exploitation, but physical and mental harm as well.

In countries like Canada and the UK, commercial surrogacy services have been banned, allowing only those that are done by consenting parties. The government must therefore act decisively to protect vulnerable Kenyan women from becoming commodities in the global reproductive trade. There is a need for the Senate to pass the comprehensive surrogacy regulations as soon as possible.