There are several scenes that catch viewers by surprise in HBO’s new documentary film, "Google Baby": The exact moment an Indian surrogate mother sees the child she has held in her body for months, and is told not to cry by the doctor performing a Caesarian-section; The tired afternoon in which a 28-year-old American mom plugs in her big-screen television, and explains that she donates her eggs to afford her lifestyle; The telephone conversation in which an Israeli businessman sells a childless couple on the idea of impregnating more than one surrogate to have a better chance a viable pregnancy, and then hangs up to wonder out loud about what he has done.

Following the new big business of unregulated, international surrogacy, “Google Baby” goes to places both familiar and foreign, tracing the strange supply and demand of baby production. If those words sound cold, consider that many of the parents applying for international surrogates are desperate for their own children, and see this as their only affordable means. Consider also that this desperation has resulted in a worldwide market, where sperm and eggs from various donors (American, European, Asian) are implanted into women in India, with parents arriving to pick up their newborns some 10 months later.