In India, a Rise in Surrogate Births for West

NEW DELHI — When 24-year-old Komal Kapoor handed over the twins she had just borne to a visiting American couple last month, she said she felt “something like sadness.”

But that lasted just a few minutes.

“In my head I kept saying, ‘These are not my children, these are not my children,’ ” recalled Kapoor, a surrogate mother who lives in a New Delhi slum. After delivering what she called two “very beautiful, fair-skinned, black-haired babies” for the couple, she signed a document relinquishing all rights to the infants in return for a little over $8,000 — more than 12 times her annual earnings as a garment worker. “With the money, I want to secure my daughter’s future,” she said.

This nation of more than 1.2 billion people has emerged as the preferred destination for a growing number of couples from around the world who are looking for a low-cost, trouble-free way of becoming parents. But a government-funded survey released this month said that in the absence of regulation, some unscrupulous agents are luring poor, uneducated women into signing surrogacy contracts...