Single Women Trapped by Surrogate Womb Brokers
Surrogate womb brokers are fishing in murky waters amid the crowded infertility centers, ensnaring single women in their traps.
The circulation of reports on social networks about single women falling victim to surrogate womb arrangements reveals the poverty gripping society, which not only affects women but has also entrapped single women in this predicament.
The busiest lists at infertility centers concern surrogate wombs. Mothers unable to carry a fetus in their own womb or unable to become pregnant due to illness search for a womb in which their fetus can develop and come into the world, allowing them to experience the joy of motherhood. For this purpose, they register at infertility centers to rent a womb.
These lists contain the names of individuals with homeless fetuses. Applicants sometimes wait more than a year from the moment of registration until finding a surrogate womb. During this time, many opportunistic individuals are also present who, for their own benefit, create channels on social networks to act as intermediaries between requesters and providers.
This opportunism occurs while one of the legal conditions for surrogate womb arrangement is “having successfully completed at least one pregnancy to term,” yet brokers operating in this field overlook single women for their own benefit and offer them the proposal to rent their wombs.
Single women in Iran struggling with economic hardship and sometimes poverty are victims of these brokers, whose wombs are often pledged and rented in many cases. One of them, in an interview with an IRNA researcher, said: “I had previously filled out the form as a womb provider, but after a short period, I was asked again to fill out the form, and then they presented the pregnancy contract wrapped as a gift before me. Pregnancy contract means renting a womb, but with the difference that the parties become mahrams to each other and the amount is agreed upon. Unfortunately, sometimes wombs are mortgaged and rented, meaning a lump sum is paid upfront and an additional monthly amount is also paid.”
The expansion of poverty is one of the causes of the spread of corruption and immorality. Particularly in cases where profit-seekers ensnare single women in these enormous sums for their own benefit and exploit them for their advantage. Single women who are even trapped in temporary marriage contracts under the guise of renting their wombs, during which other exploitations may also occur.
However, the government, which is one of the issuers of these permits, proceeds with this without regard for single women, and although they know that brokers are also active in this field, they do not consider any measures to protect single women. Every day, another victim falls prey to poverty, corruption, and brokers of whom the government is not even unaware.
