Wombs for hire: the painful price of Asia’s baby trade

As the car bounces along a rural Thai road, a baby just a few months old watches the emerald green countryside rush by from Nicha’s* lap, oblivious to the countdown that has already begun.Soon the child will be handed over to her father to be raised in China by grandparents whose own hopes of a larger family were curtailed by decades of state population control.Nicha may never see the baby she gave birth to again, but she knows that is the painful price of commercial surrogacy.This is her third time around the carousel of pregnancy, love, nurture and eventual separation that always ends with the same abrupt emotional wrench.Newborn babies in hospital. Surrogate mothers in Southeast Asia can be paid up to US$15,000 to help strangers become parents. Photo: Shutterstock“It’s a deep bond, just like carrying and raising your own child,” Nicha told This Week in Asia, sharing videos taken on her phone of the smiling baby.“My whole family has fallen in love including my own parents and children. It will be so hard to give up this baby, but I have to.”