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Assisted Reproduction

Is India A Viable Option For Japanese Intended Parents Pursuing Surrogacy?

If you are a Japanese Intended Parent considering surrogacy in India, I would strongly encourage you to speak to an immigration attorney in Japan before proceeding with any agency in India. While I cannot personally verify this Japanese woman’s account of her experience in trying to secure a visa, it is nevertheless is worrisome enough that I thought it worthwhile to share:

I am writing you for the first time. I am sorry for contacting you because I do not know who I can ask. But I want to tell you because people in the world should know this. So I decided to write this with courage.

Since my friend who can read English well recommended to contact you about a problem for surrogacy, please help for many victims in Japan. It is about surrogacy in India . It is about an agent and the agent’s name is Baby for all. The agent is for Doctor Naina Patel in Anand . The agent is a bad company whose work is like a fraud. I was said “please go to India with a tourist visa” .

I am Japanese . A lot of Japanese people want to use a surrogate mother. After I decided to use the agent, I was said by an acquaintance that a medical visa for surrogacy will need in India. So, I called India Visa Center in Japan, but I found Japanese cannot apply the medical visa because Japan government cannot give us a letter for surrogacy. And because many people say Baby for all is scary, I called the Japanese consulate in India and asked about the visa and told about Baby for all. Consulate was telling me we cannot trust Baby for all and we cannot enter India with a different visa for surrogacy. I told Baby for all to cancel because I was so scared , but money was not returned. There are many people like me but everyone is scared because we heard baby for all will attack if we write bad things about Baby for all on internet. So everyone gives up. They are still advertising Indian surrogacy to Japanese people and tell them to go to India with tourist visa. I went to a meeting of a group of victims of Baby for all several times but everyone says they still promote to get a tourist visa. And everyone is said that we cannot talk about it to anyone. I know more than 10 victim. I went to a civil service to get an advice but after all they gave me only advice and didn’t help very much.

It is very terrible. Is this acceptable in the world? Please tell me Or can we still go to India with tourist visa for surrogacy? I am not good at English and asked my friend who can write English to translate my words. So, I am nervous if you can understand what I would like to say, but thank you for reading my email. You can reply in English.

You can see the original post, in Japanese, here.

Discussion

2 comments for “Is India A Viable Option For Japanese Intended Parents Pursuing Surrogacy?”

  • Nobuko Miyamoto

    Andrew

    Thanks for posting this. It’s about time someone brought attention to this issue. This has been going on for over a year now and it is unknown precisely how many Japanese victims there are. The facts are simple. Dr Patel of Akanska uses this proxy agent, Baby for All, to recruit and manage Japanese surrogacy clients to her clinic. The principals who own Baby for All never identify themselves publicly but it is believed they are Japanese origin either living in India, Japan or the US. When potential Japanese clients cntact them, they will tell them that surrogacy in India for Japanese is legal and that they don’t need medical visas and, finally, that Dr Patel has “connections” to get babies out of India. This is in direct contradiction of the laws of India and also the rules enunciated by the Japanese consulate and embassy in India. Japan has no surrogacy laws on its book. Therefore they can’t provide a letter of consent for its nationals that is a mandatory requirement for a surrogacy medical visa. The Japanese embassy specifically advises its nationals to stay away from surrogacy cinics in India because there is no legal framework to support this. And yet, Dr Patel and her agent keep perpetuating this fraud. There is currently no other clinic in India that works with Japanese, if approached they tell them immediately that they can’t work with them. Even the most dubious and unethical clinics stay away from Japanese clients because they know it is impossible to get the babies out. So the question is why does this famous Dr Patel continue this ruse? What connections does she have that others don’t? How can she recommend to Japanese to come on tourist visas when this is illegal from not only Indian law but also Japanese guidelines? There are reports of several clients who have continued this agency and they have lost their money and have no way to confirm if any services were rendered and, worst of all, they have no one to complain to as they are soliciting this agent illegally. If Japanese are reading this – please BEWARE – STAY AWAY FROM BABIES FOR ALL SURROGACY AGENCY. The only way you can engage surrogacy services in India is via a medical visa. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a complete fraud.

  • Disgusting

    Andrew, this is very interesting and it has a huge implication for India and other
    international surrogacy host countries.

    After visiting the link: http://surrogacyfraudwatchforjapanese.blogspot.com/

    I also visited a link on this blog for the agency “Babies for All” and I skimmed over
    most of their postings using Google translate. Not an easy task, but one can infer most of the content in Japanese. The second blog pointed to this blog which caught my attention:

    http://dairishussan.blogspot.com/2014/04/blog-post_3.html

    which is the blog for the Babies for All agency that states it works exclusively
    with Dr Patel to manage Japanese clients going to India (her clinic in Anand)
    for surrogacy services. If what they claim is true then the agent and Dr. Patel are committing fraud against potential, unsuspecting Japanese clients who don’t understand the intricacies of the surrogacy laws and guidelines in India.

    First, throughout the blog, Baby for All actively solicits Japanese to come to India for legal surrogacy. This is not possible on legal grounds because Japan is one of the countries which doesn’t have any commercial surrogacy laws on her books. Given no position exists, the Japanese govt and its embassies and consulates in India are unable to provide a no-contest letter, as the Indian
    govt mandates, in order for Japanese to secure a medical visa. Note: without a medical visa, it is illegal for any foreigner to commission surrogacy and any clinics that work with clients who don’t possess a medical visa can be shut down and the owners imprisoned (these laws came out in Dec 2012 by MHA ministry in India and they are being enforced very strictly) So it’s impossible for a Japanese to go to India as they can’t obtain a medical visa. This fact is actually flaunted in the Baby for all’s posting above where they attack the Japanese diplomatic corps and their rules: “The delusional Japanese Consulate emailed a Japanese citizen who inquired about the surrogacy in India and wrote Japan
    strongly recommends Japanese citizens NOT commission surrogacy in India since the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the Japan Embassies don’t issue the letter. The Japanese Consulate is wrong and deceiving people” With this statement the blogger is contradicting themselves.

    At the same time, the blog above brags that India actually issued a medical visa to one of their clients by showing the picture of the medical visa issued to the Japanese citizen who they insist did
    NOT obtain a no-contest letter from the Japanese government. So either the agency is photoshopping these pictures or the Indian government has a double-standard for different clinics and potential for fraud and bribery is happening to secure these medical visas.

    All the International government efforts below are irrelevant.

    http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/service/reporting-births-and-citizenship-questions/surrogacy-a.r.t.-and-dna-testing

    This page states: The Indian government requires prospective commissioning parents to meet certain conditions to qualify for medical visas prior to arriving in India for treatment. Details of the visa requirement can be found in Frequently Asked Questions on the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs
    website here .

    http://mha1.nic.in/foreigDiv/FAQs.html

    This
    has a link to

    http://mha1.nic.in/pdfs/CS-GrntVISA-291112.pdf

    http://chennai.usconsulate.gov/medical_visas_surrogacy.html

    http://photos.state.gov/libraries/india/231771/ACS/Binder1.pdf

    Given all this information, any Japanese considering this clinic and agency should pay
    close attention to the warnings by the US and Japanese govts. But no one can find who is operating this agency, Baby for All. They didn’t disclose their identity anywhere. This should be a major red flag for anyone considering this agency and it reflects poorly on the ethics of Dr Patel and the government of India also for not enforcing and monitoring its laws to protect potential foreign victims from being scammed.

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