This Article has been written by Ms. Shilpi Sharma, a 2nd year student of Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
The process of surrogacy is crucial for couples who are unable to fulfil their cherished dream of becoming parents, but as the number of surrogacy cases in the nation rises, the commercialization of surrogacy takes root, primarily harming the surrogate mother through her exploitation.
Ancient Hindu mythology, which provides numerous examples of surrogacy practices from antiquity, also touches on the history of surrogacy in India.
While the surrogacy procedure has great aspects that offer happiness to infertile couples, it also has bad aspects that contribute to a number of legal, ethical, and moral problems in Indian culture. The article goes on to discuss the advancements in the surrogacy industry as well as how the government is working hard to only use charitable surrogates and has outlawed the commercialization of surrogacy.
Additionally, a draft bill to create and govern the nation’s surrogacy commission process has been accepted by our union cabinet. In the article’s latter section, the purpose and goals of the surrogacy regulatory bill are covered in more detail.
Every person has the unalienable right to procreate with their offspring. Being a parent is one of the most gratifying and life-changing experiences.
The field of infertility medicine has advanced significantly in the modern era of technology. A new family is created when two men or women come together to form a marriage connection, and this family is deemed complete once children are born. On the other hand, some couples are unable of becoming parents. According to research, one in six couples have these issues. The lack of a kid is viewed as a mark against the family.
There are numerous cases where the inability to procreate caused marriages to fail. Infertility, the medical term for the inability to conceive a child, is a worldwide issue. The WHO Report states that between 10% and 15% of people worldwide, including those in India, are infertile.
Adoption was the only option available to couples without children in the past, but with advances in medical care, infertility treatments, and artificial human reproduction technology, surrogacy is now possible. In vitro fertilisation, insemination, embryo transfer, and other artificial human reproductive technologies are relatively common these days. Surrogacy has turned out to be the most widely used of all these methods.
In a nation like India, surrogacy has strengthened a new degree of scientific growth in which a mother of another womb assists another mother who is unable to become a mother for whatever reason.
The Latin word surrogates, which meaning a substitute, is where the word surrogate originates.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines surrogacy as a contract in which a woman consents to being artificially inseminated in order to bear childbirth using her partner’s semen.
Surrogacy is defined as “the practice in which a woman bears a child for the other couple to produce children in the usual way” in the most recent edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.
Surrogacy, as used in medical terminology, refers to the practice of using a replacement for the biological mother.
The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill defines surrogacy as a contract wherein a woman consents to an assisted reproductive technology-achieved pregnancy in which neither her husband nor she owns any gametes, with the goal of carrying the pregnancy to term and giving the child to the person or people for whom she is acting as a surrogate.
There are primarily three types of surrogacy in general:
Utilising Genetic Adoption
Complete Surrogacy
Pregnancy-Based Surrogacy
Two varieties of surrogacy exist:
Commercial Surrogacy: In this kind of surrogacy, the surrogate mother receives compensation in addition to the necessary medical costs for the duration of the surrogacy.
Altruistic Surrogacy: In this specific kind of surrogacy, the surrogate mother bears no financial compensation for the pregnancy other than what is necessary to cover her medical costs.
Hindu mythology also provides examples of surrogacy and illustrates the secrecy that keeps surrogacy practices prevalent today. Vishnu ji heard Vasude’s pleas in the Bhagavata Purana, pleading with Kansa not to kill every son born. After listening to these requests, Vishnu had Devika’s embryo moved to Rohini, the other vasudev bride. Balaram, Krishna’s brother, was born to Rohini, who nurtured him in secret while Vasudev and Devki informed Kansa that the infant was dead.
The origins of surrogacy can also be traced back to the Mahabharata, where Gandhari gave birth to a semisolid substance. Mahairishi Vyas then separated the substance into 100 pieces and placed them in various pots. Thus were born the hundred Kauravas.
On October 3, 1978, 67 days after the world’s second and India’s first IVF baby was born, Kanupriya was born.Dr. Subhas Mukherjee’s efforts paid off, as the newborn Kanupriya managed to hide two mates in Kolkata. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the birth of this first Indian kid through IVF.
It can be difficult to conceive a child being traded, since children are symbols of love, not money, and having a child is seen as detracting from marketing activities. Surrogacy has, nevertheless, entered the commercial domain in a nation such as India.
In contemporary Indian society, the commercialization of surrogacy has given rise to a political controversy. The surrogacy market is now expanding quickly and getting quite big. In a nation like India, “N” numbers of prospective parents wish to hire other women to birth their children.
The idea of surrogacy has been around using a woman’s natural biological function as collateral for a business deal; as a result, surrogate services are now widely advertised. Operating agencies are recruiting surrogates and profiting handsomely from them. The selling of children and the establishment of breeding farms that could convert women into kid producers are the only new issues brought about by the commercialization of surrogacy.
Many experts refer to the administration of the surrogacy procedure in India as a “booming business” for babies. In India, the practice of surrogacy is currently referred to as a commercial agreement for a woman’s regular biological function. Due to the easy availability of surrogate mothers in India and the significantly lower overall cost of the surrogacy process compared to other nations, the surrogacy sector in India is flourishing. Approximately $445 billion is currently involved in the surrogate motherhood industry in India. India is the only nation in the world that allowed commercial surrogacy to occur in 2002. Most Indian surrogate moms receive payment in installments over a nine-month period on average for their services as surrogates. The number of surrogacy cases has suddenly increased during the last three years; the increase is probably greater than 150%.
The towns of Anand in Gujarat State, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Pune and Mumbai in Maharashtra State, Delhi, Kolkata, and Thiruvananthapuram are among the locations in India where surrogates are readily available. Couples without children travelled to India in quest of a surrogate mother because there are more of them available there and they do it for much less money than in other nations. Since most surrogates come from the lower socioeconomic strata of Indian culture, the arrangements for the surrogacy process are typically made in an arbitrary and sometimes dishonest manner.
Following a thorough examination of the data provided by the National ART (artificial reproductive technique) Registry of India, it was discovered that the number of instances in 2005 increased by 300 percent when compared to 2004 (from 50 in 2004 to about 160 in 2005).
The trading of human organs for commercial purposes is prohibited by the Human Organs Act of 1994.
In 2002, the Indian government legalized commercial surrogacy. This marked the beginning of a significant surge in the number of commercial surrogacy firms operating in India, many of which claim to be experts in surrogacy law and have assisted foreigners seeking to use a mother’s womb for rent. Such marshalling is seen as very explosive since it promotes the commercialization of infant sales and undermines the respect and standing of the widely acknowledged phenomena of women’s reproductive capacities.
The Law Commission of India’s 228th report suggests outlawing the practice of commercial surrogacy and adopting appropriate legislation that permits ethically righteous altruistic surgery.
The Indian Council of Medical Research released the following rules to control surrogacy agreements:
The couple and the surrogate mother would determine the amount of financial compensation that the surrogate mother would be entitled to.
The surrogate mother forfeits all parental rights over the surrogate kid and is not permitted to provide her own egg for the surrogacy.
The idea of using a surrogate to have a child is not new; in fact, surrogacy has been practiced since ancient times. Anyone who wants to have a child can use surrogacy; it is not just for infertile couples or those who are unable to conceive a child without a medical condition. The increasing number of surrogacy procedures has an impact on national and international discourse on legal, moral, ethical, and religious matters.
The increasing prevalence of commercial surrogacy results in human rights violations; however, it also protects infertile women’s right to procreate.
As the surrogacy industry in India grows, it has brought with it a number of difficulties as well as social, ethical, and legal issues associated to the practise, necessitating the need for specific regulation.
The surrogacy regulation bill is timely because it addresses the need to examine the commercial surrogacy industry, which is increasingly seen by Indians as an unethical business. The major objective of the measure is to outlaw the practice of exploiting both the surrogate mother and the child born via surrogacy.
In a nation like India, the surrogacy process can have both beneficial and harmful effects. When surrogacy is handled carefully, it can help many infertile couples who are unable to conceive. However, when surrogacy is handled carelessly or is utilised for commercial gain, it can have a negative impact on society as a whole.
REFERENCES :
- https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Surrogacy in India
- A article on surrogacy regulation bill (2016) on legal service India
- The Surrogacy regulation bill 2016 passed by the parliament.
- Fees structure for the supermarket of surrogacy from different articles available on Google.com
- www.Indiankanoon.com for referring different case laws
- An article on commercialisation of surrogacy in India.
- An article from www.prsindia.org/billtrack/surrogacy regulation bill 2019