Surrogacy

Surrogacy is a term used for the cases where couples who are unable to have a child rely on another woman who acts as a surrogate mother to carry their baby. Surrogacy was first introduced in the year 1980. And was legalized in India in the year 2002. But as the year progressed the GOI noticed some flaws and misuse of Commercial surgery. Observing this ICMR introduced some regulations to prevent the exploitation of surrogacy. As the years progressed several amendments were made to the bill. In the year 2015, the Government of India banned the practice of commercial surgery and also barred the foreign nationals, NRI’s from participating. According to a survey from the UN in the year, 2012 India was declared as the “World Capital of Surrogacy” and was known as the Cradle of the World. The iconic case of “Baby Manjhi Yamda vs. Union of India” where travel documents for a baby of Japanese parents who was conceived and born by an Indian surrogate mother revealed several flaws in the surrogate bill which further led in the several regulations of the act. In the latest Surrogacy Regulation Bill the key points focused were on facts such as the term defining infertility was revised and the process of commercial surrogacy was banned only a close relative of the couple would be eligible to become a surrogate mother and also post-delivery 36 months was defined where the couple needed to care of any medical complications that arose from the pregnancy of the surrogate mother. Even after all the amendments in the bill, India has still a long way to go to curb the presence of malpractices and misuse of surrogacy.