Baby factories in Nigeria

A GRID iron is an intentional malapropism. In medicine, one gridiron is the type of incisionused in appendectomy, the removal of an inflamed appendix, a vestige of the gut with little or no use but a litany of woes. Here, alternating crisscrossing cuts are employed as progress is made into the abdominal cavity.

This is a deliberate platform created to prevent a laterday complication of herniation- the protrusion of intestinal contents through the abdominal wall sequel to weakened muscles.

One of the greatest advances of science in thelast fifty years was the sequencing of the human genome. This opened a vast field of research in the basic structure and building blocks of humanity and the essence of being. Inlaboratories and research institutions, biologists, embryologists and allied scientists  search the endless possibilities that arise from the complete understanding of the structure of man. Before now it was generally assumed that cell division-the process that begins the formation of the whole- also known in biology as mitosis must begin without fertilization.

The development of Dolly the sheep put paid to that assertion. Africa however lags behind in scientific development and one major area is in the advances in fertility.A reverse application of fertility treatment has led to the proliferation of baby factories across Nigeria especially in the South Eastern region.

In these sweat shops, young girls who are out and down on their luck with no hope for a future are engaged by the owners of the factories andmade to enter into paid liaisons with young men. As soon as they get pregnant, they are catered for in these factories until they bear children who are immediately taken away from them and sold to already sourced buyers. The subterranean and exploitative motives behind the actions negate its application as a form of treatment of infertility. And the offspring of these unions are in no way biological children of the couple to whom they are sold.

Science has conquered infertility and couples who have hitherto been unable to conceive have a wide range of options. But the problem arises when the couple or one of them insists that the offspring must be biological. Fertility  management in Europe and North America is guided by spirited monitoring schemes with rules, regulations and enabling laws.

One of these is the adoption process which though may be lengthy and cumbersome is reliable. Another option is surrogacy. Where the seed of the male partner is active and motile but unable to conceive the woman, there is the option of getting it artificially inseminated into the woman. This is achievable in many ways.

But ifthe husband’s sperm is unable to play this role, artificial insemination can be done by a donor.The same applies if the female partner is unable to produce viable eggs for fertilization. No  records are kept of donors. They are usually young and healthy medical students but each laboratory has its own rules and regulations to guide this process. Both partners can also agree to produce seeds which are united outside the body, usually in the laboratory and the fertilized egg inserted back into the female partner.

This is traditional surrogacy. This method produced the world’s first test tube baby, Louise Brown. The other variant of this method is when the fertilized egg is carried by a surrogate mother who has no genetic link to the offspring. This is gestational surrogacy. A surrogate mother is usually a paid person who ab initio agrees to the rules and the baby delivered to its biological parents.

It is  the negative variant of this process that baby factories in Nigeria exploit. Ordinarily this could have passed for surrogacy and a form of treatment of infertility as once upon a time in some communities and societies, a woman unable to conceive usually took a ‘wife’ that bore children for her. This was the case with Sarah and Abraham and the slave girl Hagar in the Old Testament.

Surrogacy remains a grey area in the management of the biological child bearing process and is only legal in a few countries. It started a little over thirty years ago in the UnitedStates. In those days, most of the surrogates were also the genetic mothers who were made pregnant through the insemination of the sperm of the intending father.

However, in 1986, asurrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead refused to give the baby to its biological father and his wife. This was the Baby M case. As the two families battled for rights to the ownership of the child, traditional surrogacy gave way to gestational surrogacy where an embryo is created in vitro-sometimes using eggs and sperm from the parents and sometimes from donors and then transferred to the surrogate mother who has no genetic link to the offspring.

This is the area that the baby factory owners choose to exploit. Even in recent times and in countries where surrogacy is legal, like India and Thailand and even in the United States, problems are still rife in the entire process. This is more so when three women are involved: the genetic mother, who has the egg used, the surrogate mother who carries the baby to termand the mother who commissioned the entire process. The Nigerian baby factory begins operations when rich gullible women seek spiritual consultants and rogue healthcare workers who promise to make them conceive and bear children even when they have passed their reproductive years.

They are made to feel pregnant one way or the other but usually by unorthodox manipulation. Then, on an appointed day, they arrive at the ‘maternity’ where they are sedated and some kind of blood or its artificial variant dabbed in the birth canal to give a semblance of labour. On waking up, they are presented with a bundle obviously delivered around about that time in the next room by someone else.

The female reproductive system can be easily manipulated and women in their fifties and early sixties have borne children. But there is a well laid out procedure in these instances involving highly qualified personnel in state of the art facilities with clear rules and regulations. The products of Nigeria baby factories have no genetic link with their ‘mothers’.

Problems begin when these babies are screened for their genetic makeup as the ‘mothers’ try to take them abroad and want to procure a passport, usually the American one for their ‘offspring’.

The entire process now becomes a scandal involving security agencies and the anti-human trafficking squads. Surrogacy is an old idea with a new name but Nigeria’s baby factories fall short of the definition. Nigeria needs to tighten its laws and bring to an end this obnoxious trade in persons while encouraging and sensitizing the populace on the various platforms available in the management of infertility. The sanctity of humanity is unquestionable.

Michael Oberabor & Tunde Fatunde, a medical  doctor,Warri, Delta State &  Fatunde, professor of French Studies, Lagos State University, Lagos.