Commercial surrogacy is outlawed in Australia but in 2011-12 more than 300 babies were produced for Australian couples at overseas clinics.
Research to be presented at the Brisbane ASPIRE conference this week shows infertility will this century become the third most widespread health condition behind cancer and cardiovascular disease.
With more than 48 million infertile couples worldwide the development of modern IVF clinics in places like India and Thailand has seen poor women in these countries turn to surrogacy for an income.
Melbourne mother Melissa Hay simultaneously paid two women in India to carry her three children Jack, Lily and Sophie who were born on the same day in December 2012.
They were three of the 750 babies who have been produced at the Surrogacy Centre India.
Mrs Hay had ovarian cysts and had her ovaries removed at the age of 23.
She unsuccessfully tried IVF using donor eggs and by her late 30s Mrs Hay was too old for adoption.
She gave up on the idea of having children until she saw a news program on surrogacy.
After researching six surrogacy centres in India Melissa chose Surrogacy Centre India because she was able to meet the women who would carry her babies and felt they were doing it for altruistic reasons.
Using an Indian egg donor and her husband’s sperm two surrogate mothers were implanted with twin embryos. One twin died in utero and three babies were delivered.
“What they did was amazing, how could you ever properly thank those women?” Melissa said.
“Morally, of course I had issues,” she says.
“I wanted to understand how they supported the whole treatment of the mother and if they were not honest I wouldn’t go near them,” she said.
The whole process cost Melissa and her husband $80,000 with the surrogate mothers earning $5,000 each and they plan to take their children back to India to meet their surrogate mothers.
Doctor Nayana Patel, Medical Director of another Indian clinic — Akanksha Infertility — will speak at the conference today and says since 2004-05 her clinic has produced 768 surrogate babies.
Her clinic has employed 600 Indian women to act as surrogates for local Indian families and couples from 42 other countries.
Currently her centre is managing 80 women carrying babies for wealthy couples.
At Dr Patel’s service couples pay around $A24,000 and the surrogate mother gets $9,000.
While they are pregnant the surrogate mothers at Arkanksa Ferility live in a clean residential care facility where their families can visit them and they are trained as beauticians, tailors and nurses.
Dr Patel says surrogacy should not be seen as a rent-a-womb business.
“These surrogates are compensated for their services, as a homeowner would pay a maid,” she says.
“It can change the lives of surrogates because the money they earn may allow them to buy a home for their family, start a small business or educate their own children,” she said.
Surrogacy Australia will run a conference on May 24-25 in Melbourne explaining how surrogacy works with parents and doctors speaking of their experience.
Surrogacy Australia spokesman Sam Everingham says there is a risk some surrogate mothers overseas are exploited and that some may have the money they earned appropriated by their husbands who gamble it away.
Around ten per cent of families get burnt by their foreign surrogacy experience and can face massive medical costs and end up without a child, he said.
If parents supply DNA test showing at least one of them is a parent they can obtain Australian citizenship and a passport for a foreign born surrogate child.
In 2011-12 only 23 babies were born to Australian women who volunteered to be surrogate mothers and the group is fighting for surrogacy in Australia to be made easier.
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