JOIN USWith test-tube baby clinics mushrooming all over the country, the government has come out with a draft legislation to regulate these clinics and protect the rights of surrogate mothers.
The latter often find themselves at the receiving end of the booming in vitro fertilisation (IVF) business. The draft of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation)Bill, 2014, has been released for public comments its final version goes to the Cabinet for approval.
“Surrogate mother shall be an ever married Indian woman with minimum twenty-three years of age and maximum thirty-five years of age and shall have at least one live child of her own with minimum age of three years,” says the draft bill.
In an earlier version of the legislation—The ART (Regulation) Bill, 2008—the age bracket for a surrogate mother was 21 years on the lower side and 45 years on the upper.
What new bill says
The new bill also makes it clear that no woman “shall act as a surrogate for more than one successful live birth in her life and with not less than two years interval between two deliveries.” Foreigners have been barred from taking the surrogacy route in India, but it has been allowed for non-resident Indians.
Currently, in the absence of such provisions, many women from poor socio-economic background are lured into surrogacy by unscrupulous clinics violating medical norms and ethics. The older version of the bill did not have this provision at all.
All consent forms and agreements, including the one on surrogacy shall be in local language also so that everyone, including the surrogate mother and the gamete donor, can understand the contents of the consent forms and agreements, says the bill.
As surrogate mothers are often financially duped by the clinics and middlemen, the proposed law says the commissioning couple would not only take care of the medical and insurance cost but would also pay the surrogate mother a monetary compensation.
Several activists and National Commission of Women members alleged while IVF clinics charge tens of lakhs from the clients, the surrogacy agreements mention a figure of Rs 1-4 lakh. But the woman, who rent the womb get Rs 40,000-50,000 as the clinics usurp the rest of the money showing them as medical expenses incurred on that woman.
A mapping exercise by the Indian Council of Medical Research found close to 1,400 ART clinics all over the country. The maximum number of clinics are in Delhi followed by Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
The bill also suggests creation of national and state-level boards to regulate these clinics and moots punishment for those violating the law.