Google Baby

The trailer for a new Israeli documentary, Google Baby, offers an excruciatingly up-close look at India's booming global surrogacy industry. The clip opens with a woman lying draped in surgical gowns. The sounds of flesh being sliced are followed by an infant's first cries. The doctor presiding over the procedure asks the woman from whom she's just removed the baby why she is crying, and then immediately takes a cell phone call to make a pitch for another surrogacy arrangement. Moments later, the surrogate weeps as she is given a quick look at the baby. She's permitted a single caress of the baby's face, before it is taken away to the "contracting mother."

According to a reviewer's summary of the film, Google Baby also depicts an Israeli entrepreneur who has taken the globalization of baby-making to new levels; he observes that "outsourcing to India is very trendy right now." His business model: Recruit American women to supply eggs, have the embryos created in the U.S. where all this is legal and little regulated, freeze the embryos and ship them to the surrogacy brokers in India, where they are used to impregnate low-caste women. Indian surrogates are often required to deliver by Caesarian section, after which the babies are handed over to the clients arriving for the scheduled birth from the U.S., the U.K., and other locales.

Google Baby was screened last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. The description of the film at its website says that director Zippi Brand Frank "doesn't interject her own opinions" about the global surrogacy business. After watching the clip, that claim surprised me.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Outsourcing Pregnancy: Surrogacy as "Emotional Labor"
• Surrogacy in India: The Sun Still Never Sets 
  
• Travel to exotic lands; sell your eggs