The increasing infertility rates and the expensive cost of surrogacy in western countries had made India a preferable surrogacy tourism site during the year 2002 to 2015. The cost of surrogacy in India is one-half or one-third in comparison with western countries. The majority of surrogate mothers in India belong to poorly educated, rural, and improvised backgrounds.
They could be easily exploited. The Indian government had introduced ‘The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill’ in 2016 to protect vulnerable Indian women from exploitation. The amendment of subsisted laws and guidelines was later modified by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
On 5th August 2019, Lok Sabha passed this Bill and now commercial surrogacy is completely banned in India. Altruistic surrogacy is also prohibited for foreigners, NRIs, and PIOs from the Indian commissioning surrogacy law.
The amendment requires stopping to make India a ‘baby factory’ of the world. India has all the facilities like qualified medical professionals, low-cost medical facilities, and the surrogacy industry, particularly of the commercial and trans-border variety, and an indifferent regulatory regime to pursue hassle-free surrogacy.
The aim to pass the Surrogacy Regulation (2019) Bill includes protect the vulnerability and clarify every stakeholder’s rights in surrogacy arrangements. The Surrogacy Regulation (2019) Bill gives the opportunity to comprehensively discuss all aspects related to surrogacy arrangements in India.
According to the current surrogacy law in India, only married couples having a minimum of five years of continuation of marital status have the legal right to opt for altruistic surrogacy.
Intended parents can only seek their close relatives for surrogacy. Not even Indian single parents, a couple in a live-in relationship or homosexual couples do not allow to opt for surrogacy in India. It restricted commercial surrogacy and allowed just altruistic surrogacy hence keeping the surrogate from benefiting financial remuneration for her services.
Such a limitation strips women of their self-governance in settling on conceptive decisions and builds up conventional cultural upsides of women’s jobs in the private circle having no monetary worth. At this point, social experts believe the need of great importance is to perceive surrogacy as a ‘right’ and not a ‘need’. They raise a question on female’s right to their service.
According to their opinion, India is going through a progressive time whereby the residents’ reasoning interaction is going through an extreme shift away from the man-centric standards to more feministic ethos; the proposed surrogacy enactment fills in as a dark spot on the reformist development of the idea of uniformity in India.
Not only the social aspect, but the economic setback is also a considerable impact of banning commercial surrogacy in India. Currently, the Indian government makes this country a top choice for infertility treatments.
The combination of the economic infertility treatment and availability of modern amenities in the field of assisted reproductive technology (ART). But restriction of foreigners for pursuing India leads to a huge economical loss. Foreigner intended parents are selecting other alternative countries like Georgia, Ukraine where commercial surrogacy is open to continuing surrogacy.
Therefore, banning surrogacy in India impacts both economic as well as ethical points aspects. However, it is necessary to mention that an amendment of the Bill is required to solve the limitation, but stringent guidelines require protecting the vulnerability and clarifying every stakeholder’s rights in surrogacy arrangements.
