ABSTRACT
Within the past three years Anand, a city in the State of Gujarat in western India, has emerged as a transnational hub for surrogacy. Although California remains the global destination of choice for reproductive tourists seeking gestational surrogates, Anand has quickly developed an international profi le as a destination where gestational surrogates can be hired at cheaper prices compared to the U.S. by consumers from Canada, Israel, Japan, India, Germany, and the Middle East as well as the United States and other parts if Europe. Describing the Indian surrogacy market, Amrita Pande, an Indian-American sociologist fl uent in Hindi and Gujarati, writes “Th e Indian structure is closest to the liberal market model of surrogacy in California where surrogacy births are primarily managed by private, commercial agencies that screen, match, and regulate agreements according to their own criteria and without state interference” (2009a: 382).
