Draft Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016: Rhetoric or Surrogate-centric? by Dr. Rituparna Bhattacharyya (original) (raw)
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Draft Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016: Rhetoric or Surrogate-centric?
Chaired by honourable Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Damodar Modi, the Union Cabinet on 24 August 2016 introduced and approved the draft bill on Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in India, known popularly as the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. The bill aims at regulating the ever-proliferating unregulated surrogacy industry interalia banning commercial surrogacy services for single parents, homosexuals, cohabiting partners in addition to foreigners and overseas citizens of India. The key aim of this commentary is to make a nuanced examination of the draft bill aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the practice of surrogacy and address gaps (if any) that require interventions.
Sexuality, Gender & Policy, 2023
In India, the issue of surrogacy has brought the entire field of assisted reproductive techniques under close scrutiny and debate. It has caused controversies as the state has interfered the process of surrogacy to make it ethically acceptable. Indian government acknowledged the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, to protect women's reproductive rights. The Act aims to ban commercial surrogacy and promote altruistic surrogacy without any payment except for the surrogate mother's medical expenses and her insurance coverage. This Act is the object of the first analysis of this article; and second, it investigates how the Act affects prospective childless couples, willing single parents, and members of the LGBTQ community. Employing the interview method and neo‐institutional methodology, this article concludes that the Act made the surrogacy more complex as, in actuality, altruistic surrogacy is a myth because it would be difficult for intended couples to find a willing surrogate mother who will intend to give birth to a child at no cost. This will pave the way for under the table transaction. The Act made it illegal for foreign couples as well as intended Indian couples who already have a child and restricts the chances for the LGBTQ community and single parents.
YMER Digital
Surrogacy is a process or procedure where a woman consents to be pregnant for other intended/desired parents who are unable to conceive due to medical/natural reasons. Overall, to say that, this is an agreement that implies a consensus ad idem between both the parties i.e., the surrogate mother, and the expected parents. From ethical and moral perspectives, it’s helpful, but some instances prove it to be a wringing of all three; surrogate, locum tenens baby and in-fecund couple. The union government keeping in view the advantages and disadvantages, has taken numerous drives to control and to bridle the ART centers. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 19th December,2018 and the same has received President’s assent on 25th Dec, 2021 in order to practice and process of surrogacy. Similarly, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 has also received the assent of the president for the regulation and supervision of the Assisted Reproductive T...
Surrogacy milieu in India: a legislative vacuum
ScienceRise: Juridical Science
Surrogacy gives hope to couples who are unable to carry child on their own. Single men, women and same-sex couples can also opt surrogacy to have their own genetic child. Surrogacy has adjourned the practice of adoption by childless couples who can bear the cost of surrogacy. Recent past has witnessed the blooming of surrogacy clinics all over the world. Eligibility of surrogates, process, legality and expenses, involved in surrogacy, differ from country to country. Most of the countries do not have surrogacy regulating legislation in force. Few countries prohibit surrogacy, while some ban commercial surrogacy and permits altruistic one. Even international surrogacy is not allowed in some jurisdictions. Easy availability and low costs of surrogacy procedures in developing countries have made surrogacy a lucrative business. India developed into a hub of commercial surrogacy with no harsh laws, regulating surrogacy clinics. Even though commercial surrogacy has been banned, still lack ...
BMC Women’s Health, 2020
BACKGROUND. Commercial surrogacy is a highly controversial issue that leads to heated debates in the feminist literature, especially when surrogacy takes place in developing countries and when it is performed by local women for wealthy international individuals. The objective of this article is to confront common assumptions with the narratives and experiences described by Indian surrogates themselves. METHODS. This qualitative study included 33 surrogates interviewed in India (Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi) who were at different stages of the surrogacy process. They were recruited through five clinics and agencies. This 2-year field study was conducted before the 2018 surrogacy law. RESULTS. Surrogates met the criteria fixed by the national guidelines in terms of age and marital and family situation. The commitment to surrogacy had generally been decided with the husband. Its aim was above all to improve the socioeconomic condition of the family. Women described surrogacy as offering better conditions than their previous paid activity. They had clear views on the child and their work. However, they declared that they faced difficulties and social condemnation as surrogacy is associated with extra-marital relationships. They also described a medical process in which they had no autonomy although they did not express complaints. Overall, surrogates did not portray themselves as vulnerable women and victims, but rather as mothers and spouses taking control of their destiny. CONCLUSIONS. The reality of surrogacy in India embraces antagonistic features that we analyze in this paper as “paradoxes”. First, while women have become surrogates in response to gender constraints as mothers and wives, yet in so doing they have gone against gender norms. Secondly, while surrogacy was socially perceived as dirty work undertaken in order to survive, surrogates used surrogacy as a means to upward mobility for themselves and their children. Finally, while surrogacy was organized to counteract accusations of exploitation, surrogates were under constant domination by the medical system and had no decision-making power in the surrogacy process. This echoes their daily life as women. Although the Indian legal framework has changed, surrogacy still challenges gender norms, particularly in other developing countries where the practice is emerging.
Thinking through surrogacy legislation in India
, and in particular discusses some of its limitations using a relational conception of consent and autonomy. It is argued that two major limitations arise from, firstly, the way the Bill attempts to introduce 'universal' notions of informed consent into a cultural context of socially determined decisionmaking, resulting in the failure to safeguard the welfare of Indian surrogates. A second limitation is that the proposed law entitles only some poor women (surrogates) in India to realise access to quality medical healthcare services compared to others (poor, infertile women). Given the significant class and gender based inequalities which frame reproductive healthcare service delivery in the country, legally guaranteed access to health services for surrogates becomes a privilege where the rights of some individuals and couples to reproduce and exercise procreative agency is valued and not others. The article argues that the Bill must give due consideration to the complex, relational and highly stratified contexts in which women undertake childbearing in India to understand why legally comprehensive consent procedures can co-exist with violations of personhood in practice. Without such consideration the article suggests that injustice toward infertile women can become part of the same legal process wherein overcoming infertility is recognised as a right. v
Surrogacy in India: Bioethics, Human Rights and Agency
Report Submitted to The European Observatory for Non-Discrimination and Fundamental Rights (E.O.N.D.F.R.), France. , 2019
At the juncture when India has banned commercial, it was an appropriate time to examine what is the situation of commercial surrogacy and its transition to altruism in India. This was a follow-up study, from the previous study conducted in 2009-2010. I interviewed 45 surrogate mothers (SMs), who had completed 63 births and given away 90 babies since 2007 to 2017. All the surrogate mothers had completed surrogacy when I interviewed them. Some of my findings reiterated my previous findings. Some serious violations of human rights and medical ethics continues to take place; women are detained in surrogate homes against their wishes and desires, sex selective abortions are performed, the restrictions imposed on women in the surrogate homes are inhuman, none of them are given a copy of their contract, the manner in which the children have been relinquished is also inhuman as some are shown the face of the children, some are not, some are expected to bond with the babies, most are eventually alienated. Women are selected into surrogacy based on their class, age, skin colour, religion, caste and the payment varied according to these categories. Women are doing all this for money. Most of the households are poor, some are very poor and the remaining are at subsistence level, doing this to gain a higher order in their present class status. Couples from abroad and non-resident Indians formed the bulk of the clients. Almost all surrogate mothers (93%) think the surrogacy process is a form of slavery and most (67%) felt the process was similar to a form of sexual exploitation of their reproductive organs. Most didn’t repeat surrogacy again and those very poor who did repeat surrogacy were the only ones who could build/buy a house. Financially, it was only the very poor without any agricultural land or house ownership who have repeated surrogacy more than once who could buy or build a house. The very poor one timer surrogate mothers have not been able to buy a house, some slipped back into abject poverty. It is only the few who were already at a subsistence level who have been able to take advantage of this extra money to enhance their economic situation. Most women did surrogacy for building/buying a house. It is the housing, health and education situation that is the root cause of surrogacy practices in India. It is important that the public and private educational, health and housing sector in India is focused towards health and education for all and also to provide low-cost housing. The surrogate mothers described the embryo transfer period as intrusive, painful, clamped down, harsh and dreadful. Pregnancy was over-medicalized with injections, medicines, ultrasounds in-utero selective abortions, cervical cerclage for twins and filled with experience of illness and depression. During delivery they experienced; fear of death, complications, fear of caesarean section, pain, neglect by commissioning parents and cruel ways in which the child(ren) is separated from them. Overall the physical and emotional impact of surrogacy has been immense on their lives. Many are suffering from an emotional setback, physically they have become weak after the surrogacy treatment, multiple embryo transfer trials, miscarriages, uterus removal and do not have the capacity to work as they used to earlier and many have developed some kinds of morbidities and have experienced near-death situations during surrogacies. Some surrogacy and egg donor deaths have been hushed up and not been reported. Not only the surrogate mothers, but also their children carry the sorrow of giving away the children born through surrogacy. The relationship with the commissioning parents as expressed by all surrogate mothers, was nice only until the baby was in their womb. After the delivery, most commissioning parents turned into inconsiderate, selfish and even cruel beings. From a global perspective, India is a typical case of how rampant violations of human and child rights, women’s bodily integrity and medical ethics thrived on global structural inequalities. In the garb of reproductive liberty, the surrogacy practice promotes deeply embedded pronatalist, patriarch, racial, ageist, casteist, sexist and ableist hegemony. This raises globally relevant questions of geneticisation, alienation of the gestational role, human and child rights violations, trafficking and reproductive injustice. Surrogacy hence needs to be included as a form of universal human rights violation.
Has India’s Surrogacy Bill Failed Women Who Become Surrogates?
ANTYAJAA: Indian Journal of Women and Social Change
Surrogacy in India is a 2.5-billion-dollar industry. The article highlights how India’s Surrogacy Bill, 2016, has failed the women who become surrogates. The bill constructs the image of a ‘good woman’ who is ready to bear the child of a relative as a ‘good deed’ for the perpetuation of the family name. It fails to address the fact that the woman consents to surrogacy under the unequal circumstances of poverty, casteism and the patriarchal exploitation of women within the family.