Dia Hadid
speaker
762 appearances
58 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 12 Sep
Dia Hadid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 51 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.
Appearances
The nice thing, Abhirami says, was that she got to sleep overnight in the hospital for the procedure.
For years, India's for-profit fertility industry was under-regulated and highly commercial.
But after a series of scandals, lawmakers reacted with a dramatic restructuring.
In 2021, the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act, or ART law as it's called, restricted access to fertility treatments to married heterosexual couples and demanded that women provide their biological material for free.
So this is what the underground market looks like now.
Marginalized women, often desperate for money, sell their eggs for a fraction of the cost that it would be in the U.S.
And despite the great toll it takes on them and the cash being exchanged, fertility clinics and egg banks call this a donation.
Academics who've researched this industry say, as it exists, it's a disaster for vulnerable women.
That's Vrinda Marva.
She is an assistant professor at the University of South Florida, and she studied the fertility industry.
We spoke to three members of the regulatory board that oversees implementation of India's assisted reproductive technology laws.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they're not authorised to speak to the media.
They said the laws were designed to offer legal clarity for the industry, safety for couples trying to have a baby, and guaranteed medical insurance and care for the women whose eggs were being harvested or who were acting as surrogates.
The law was meant to halt the exploitation of those women.
The board members we spoke to said they were not aware of the vast underground market that has emerged since these new laws were passed.
A senior member of the board was also not aware that in one case, in the northern city of Varanasi, a 13-year-old girl was lured into selling her eggs to one of India's largest fertility clinic franchises.
We met her at a charity that defends women who've been trafficked.
Her parents request we keep her identity anonymous.
They say their daughter's been socially stigmatised and she dropped out of school after her classmates found out that she sold her eggs.
She's now 15, and she says about two years ago, a neighbour told her she'd get $180 for her eggs.
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