Ayesha Roscoe

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I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.

Couples began flocking to India around 2002 because it was one of the easiest countries where people wanting to have a child could procure eggs and surrogates at about a third of the price it would be in the United States.

a multimillion-dollar fertility industry boomed and thousands of babies were born of surrogate mothers, to the point where one publication called India, quote, a global baby factory.

That was until 2021, when much of this industry went underground, in part because of a new law that made it illegal for Indian women to sell their eggs or to be compensated as a surrogate.

So this International Women's Day, we go to India to investigate the underground market for human eggs that's taken hold in the past several years.

NPR correspondent Dia Hadid and producer Shweta Desai track the story for over nine months, tracing how eggs from impoverished women make their way through a chain of agents and clinics to reach couples who seek them to have a baby.

They crisscrossed India from the southern city of Chennai to the holy Hindu city of Varanasi, connecting fertility doctors in high-end clinics to women living in slums.

And just a heads up, this story contains descriptions of physical abuse and invasive medical procedures.

Dia Hadid takes the story after the break.

Stay with us.

We're back with a Sunday story.

Here's NPR's Dia Hadid.

Coming up after the break, the middlemen, mostly women, who operate in this underground market and how they shield the industry from accountability.

We're back.

This is The Sunday Story with more from NPR's Dia Hadid.