The Indian state of Gujarat has two special homes housing 67 women, surrogate mothers for foreign couples, including Canadians, who live together, eat together, taking sewing, cooking and English classes, as they wait to give birth to someone else's baby.

Vandana, a tiny 26 year old is pregnant for the second time. She gave birth to twin girls for a New Brunswick couple in 2008. A roadside labourer, Vandana after a 12 hour day breaking stones at construction sites, earned only $2 a day. But, the clinic employing her reports, she has been able to buy a house with the $7,000 she received for becoming impregnated with the Canadian embryos.

Smita, another surrogate mother for another couple from Canada has been able to pay for her daughter's schooling with the money she received for bearing their twins, a boy and girl.

Dr. Nayana Patel, Medical Director of the Akanksha IVF Center in Anand, Gujarat say they have helped many Canadians wanting someone to help them become parents.

Chicago-based Indian-born entrepreneur Benhur Samson, who runs Surrogacy Abroad Inc. has also been helping Canadians procure surrogates. He offers an all inclusive surrogacy package for US $36,000, covering services from psychological screening of surrogates to exit visas for the babies. Currently, working with 25 to 30 Canadian couples, Samson has already assisted four Canadian couples to bring their babies home from India last year.

The international surrogacy business is flourishing, six years after Canada made the buying and selling of human eggs and sperm, including renting women's wombs illegal. Reproductive tourism as it is being called, has turned into a global industry with more and more infertile Canadians seeking fertility services overseas, which would carry up to $500,000 in fines and 10 years in jail in Canada.

Infertile Canadians are travelling to India, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Romania and the Czech republic for in vitro fertilization using paid donor eggs, helping commercialise life, including exploiting poverty stricken women in the developing world.

The surrogacy costs at the clinic in Anand are no more than US $22,000 to $25,000, a fraction of what is charged in USA, where surrogacy can cost $100,000 or more.

At the clinic, the surrogates are implanted with embryos produced via in vitro fertilization, using the couple's eggs and sperm, or that of donor eggs, if the woman is unable to conceive. The only thing the surrogate provides is the womb, with three to four embryos transferred at each attempt at pregnancy.

While, Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act prohibits payment for surrogacy, couples are not prohibited from travelling overseas for surrogacy or other fertility-related services.

Surrogacy in India is legitimate as there is no Indian law prohibiting it.