Now the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2019, which seeks to ban hiring of womb by infertile couples, has been introduced in the Lok Sabha once again and will go through usual rigmarole by the time it is converted into the act.
The government had prohibited surrogacy for international citizens in 2015. Then the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016 was introduced in Lok Sabha on 21 November 2016. It was referred to Parliamentary standing committee on 12 January 2017 and the committee submitted its report on 10 August 2017. But the bill could not get the nod.
In fact the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had issued guidelines to regulate surrogacy arrangements in 2005. The guidelines specified that the surrogate mother cannot donate her own egg for the surrogacy and that she must relinquish all parental rights related to the surrogate child. Subsequently the ICMR had prepared a draft Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill in 2008. However it did not see the light of day in Parliament.
In the intervening period several Bollywood personalities went ahead and had children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and surrogacy. However most of the cases relate to the period before the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2018, was passed.
All these years, low costs for medical treatment and easy availability of women willing to rent their wombs had made it convenient to anybody, to have a child through surrogacy. Not withstanding an attempt to bring in regulation, the industry is thriving and the number of clinics offering these services, which was nearly 59 in 2001, has shot up by over 700 by now.
Now the proposed bill provides for constitution of surrogacy boards at national and state levels. Besides the intending couples should not abandon such a child under any condition. The commercial surrogacy is banned and only close relatives are permitted to act as surrogates to infertile couples for “ethical altruistic” reasons.
Only Indian couples who have been legally married for at least five years would be allowed to opt for surrogacy. The bill seeks to “allow ethical altruistic surrogacy to the intending infertile Indian married couple between the age of 23-50 years and 26-55 years for female and male, respectively. A woman will be allowed to act as a surrogate mother only once. Altruitstic surrogacy refers to an arrangement in which a woman volunteers to carry a pregnancy for intended parents without receiving any monetary compensation in return.
The offences and penalties under the bill include: (i) undertaking or advertising commercial surrogacy; (ii) exploiting the surrogate mother; (iii) abandoning, exploiting or disowning a surrogate child and (iv) selling or importing human embryo or gametes for surrogacy. The penalty for such offences is imprisonment up to 10 years and a fine up to 10 lakh rupees. The Bill specifies a range of offences and penalties for other contraventions of the provisions of the Bill.
