Surrogacy a lure for the poor

Very few choices: Chhum Long, whose daughter was a surrogate mother, standing in front of her house in the village of Puth Sar. Abject poverty has driven many women in Cambodia to become surrogate mothers. — AFP

PHNOM PENH: Peeling a mango inside her rickety wooden shack, Chhum Long explains how her daughter’s decision to nurture a Western couple’s baby in her womb helped her family buy two desperately needed items: a metal roof and a motorbike.

Last year a broker appeared outside the 60-year-old’s house in Cam­bodia’s southern Takeo province and offered her daughter US$10,000 (RM42,000) to be a surrogate mother for a wealthy foreign couple.