Identity
No Man’s Baby
Anil Budur Lulla Anil Budur Lulla 04 Feb, 2012
An unusual problem cropped up in Hyderabad after an American woman left her seven-week-old infant on the steps of the local passport office.
An unusual surrogacy problem has cropped up in Hyderabad after an American woman left her seven-week-old infant on the steps of the local passport office on 25 December to protest against not getting travel papers or an Indian passport for her baby. Later, the police traced the 40-year-old mother, Pierlinda Vanburen Green, to a fertility clinic where the baby was re-united with her. Pierlinda is married to a Jamaican, Eric Green, and the couple live in the Caribbean isles. Unable to conceive, she came to Hyderabad to arrange for a surrogate mother. The catch is that while it’s her husband’s sperm, the child was conceived through an anonymous Indian egg donor. Pierlinda could not get a Jamaican passport for the child as there is no Jamaican embassy in India. When she approached the honorary Jamaican consul in Delhi, she was told to approach Hyderabad’s regional passport office to grant the infant travel papers. Green applied for a passport but ran into an unusual obstacle—an Indian passport can be issued only if one of the parents is biologically Indian. The passport officer ruled that the infant’s father had to undergo a DNA test to confirm his biological paternity. Otherwise, the couple have to adopt the baby, which means admitting that the kid is not theirs. Till Eric Green passes the test, either in person or through proof sent by an authorised medical institution, the little boy is in no man’s land.
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