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Lakshmi Rajput does not see herself as exploited, but driving her willingness to bear someone else's children is the desperate desire to save her own.
"I need money because my son has a hole in his heart," she says.
The 24-year-old is bearing twins for a couple, from Kerala in India's south.
The pregnancy will earn her roughly $6,000.
A doctor has told her that surgery to repair her two-year-old son Krishna's heart will cost twice that much.
"I'm doing it for money. I don't have any other option," she says.
Ms Rajput's bind reflects the case for and against an industry thought to be worth about $3 billion a year.
Exploitation and abandonment in surrogacy hub
"India has emerged as a surrogacy hub … there have been reported incidents concerning unethical practices," reads an Indian Government press release last August, announcing legislation to ban it.
The Government cites the "exploitation of surrogate mothers, abandonment of children born to surrogates … and rackets importing human embryos" as driving the move.
In 2015 the ABC unearthed details of how an Australian couple left one of their surrogate-born twins behind in India, because they had wanted one child, not two.
During a parliamentary debate last year, India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said India's reputation as a surrogacy destination was built on exploitation.
"Rich people outsource pregnancies to poor women because they can't go through labour pain," the minister said.
The bill was endorsed by India's cabinet last year, but has since been referred to a committee and is yet to pass parliament.
Fears ban could drive practice underground
In the meantime "there's a big demand in the market," says Dr Yugal Upadhyay, who runs the surrogacy clinic where Ms Rajput is staying.
"The Government should not stop commercial surrogacy, they should they should give guidelines," he says, reflecting the concern that exploitation would be far worse if the industry were forced underground.
But ban advocates say that would not stop some clinics implanting more than the permitted three embryos, a practice uncovered by research conducted by the Delhi School of Economics.
It is designed to boost the odds of pregnancy, but also increases the chances of inherently-riskier multiple births.
But Ms Rajput argues it is safer than prostitution.
"Some girls get into 'wrong' activities," she says.
"We are not doing anything wrong. There is nothing wrong in delivering a child for someone else."
Especially not she says, when giving birth to another child could mean life-saving surgery for her own.
"If it continues to be legal, I'll be a surrogate mother again," she says.
"I'll get 300,000 rupees ($5,875) now, but I still need another 300,000.
"So, I'll do it again."
Topics: surrogacy, international-law, india
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