She said the National Surrogacy Board at the central level and State Surrogacy Boards in states and union territories will be formed to check the practice.
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Titled, The Surrogacy Regulation Bill 2016, the conditions put up in it are stringent.
Instead, what we got are archaic notions of Indian culture, marriage and parenthood.
But the question is, is this new law an underhand way to ban homosexuality and live-in relationships in India for moreover to surrogacy, it’s the mention of homosexuals and live-in partners that’s majorly being highlighted in this new bill.
“This is a comprehensive bill to completely ban commercial surrogacy”, Swaraj told reporters after the cabinet meeting.
Women’s rights activist Subhashini Ali said that renting a womb has becoming a business and there’s certainly a need to regulate it. A surrogate mother has also to be in close relation to the couple seeking a surrogate child. “After that all clinics will have to adhere to these new laws once Parliament passes the Bill in the next session”, said J.P. Nadda.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday had harsh words to say about big names from the film industry who had opted for surrogacy.
“There will be a complete ban on commercial surrogacy”.
“As far as homosexual relations and live-in couples are concerned, such relations have no legal sanctity”.
“We have many examples of celebrities who have their own children, still they have gone for a surrogate child”, she said.
“The way poverty of women folk is being used in surrogacy, there are women who are anaemic, who are sick, who just for a little money are producing children for others, and in fact, they are not even paid”, she said. “Something which started as a necessity has become a hobby now”, she said.
This is known as gestational surrogacy and is one of the most common ways in which artificial reproductive technology (ART) is used. “Similarly, a couple can avail surrogacy only once in their lifetime”, she said.
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In the past decade, India has emerged as one of the top destinations for childless couples from around the world who pay impoverished women to give birth to have their children. The government also had to rule out possibilities of foreigners coming into the country for surrogacy purposes, where babies have been abandoned for visa complications in previous incidents. The GoM was constituted at the behest of the Prime minister’s office. High on the list is the fear that this bill will end up creating an underground surrogacy network in India which will end up compromising the rights and health of the surrogate mother even more.
