Govt moves to banish commercial surrogacy

THE NEW RULES

NEW DELHI: India unveiled a draft law on Wednesday to ban commercial surrogacy, deciding to block foreigners, people of Indian origin, single parents and homosexuals from having children through the rent-awomb service.

Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, who made the announcement at a press conference, linked the law to Indian ethos.

“We do not recognise live-in and homosexual relationships…. this is against our ethos,” Swaraj said shortly after the Union cabinet cleared the bill to regulate the industry, estimated at more than ₹3,000 crore annually.

Only infertile couples who have been married for at least five years can seek a surrogate, who must be a close relative, said Swaraj who headed a group of ministers that reviewed the surrogacy regulation bill that aims to end exploitation of poor Gay couples, live-in partners, single parents and foreigners will not be allowed to access surrogacy women. Close relatives “could include a sister or a sister-in-law or a daughter-in-law”, she said.

Infertility specialists were critical of the law, saying it could lead to an illegal surrogacy industry. The draft law is also likely to face opposition from surrogate mothers who had staged demonstrations last year after a government announcement to ban foreign couples from hiring Indian surrogates.

The process of surrogacy is achieved through in-vitro fertilization, commonly called IVF, in a lab where eggs harvested from a woman are fused with sperm from a man.

Healthy embryos are transferred to a surrogate mother, who is paid in advance, besides a monthly stipend until the birth of the baby. The child is then handed over to the couple who commissioned the birth.

Swaraj said only altruistic surrogacy, where the expecting parents pay for the medical procedure and not the surrogate mothers.

Single women will not be allowed to become surrogate mothers. The minister was also critical of what she called a “celebrity culture”, apparently hinting at actor Shah Rukh Khan whose third baby was born through surrogacy in 2013, triggering an ethical controversy.

“It has become a culture among celebrities. For them, getting a child through surrogacy has become a fashion, a trend… not a necessity,” Swaraj said.