In many countries
throughout the world, like New Zealand, Australia, and a lot of European
countries, commercial surrogacy has been made illegal, but that is not the case
in India. Poor women who do not have any means to earn money are becoming
surrogate mothers for foreign couples in order to better the living conditions
of her family. India has become the capital of commercial surrogacy as every
year a quarter of a million babies are reproduced for the surrogate parents.
“Reproductive Tourism” is the term given to commercial surrogacy by the US and
India is a hub for it because the surrogate cost and the fertility treatment
costs are very cheap here as compared to other countries, due to which
thousands of foreigners come flooding into India every year. Most of these
commissioning parents are NRIs from western countries where surrogacy is
illegal.
Most of the
surrogate mothers are uneducated and they are often exploited by their doctors
for the benefit of their wealthy clients. As a result, a surrogate mother may
even lose her life.
As a part of the
surrogacy contract, if the surrogate mother is diagnosed with any life
threatening condition in the later stage of her pregnancy, due to any reason,
she will be sustained with life saving equipment for healthy birth of the fetus
on behalf of the genetic parents. It’s quite obvious that the surrogacy
contracts are so harsh that they give more importance to the life of an unborn
fetus as compared to the surrogate mother.
A surrogate
mother’s death was barely covered by media and no police investigation was
ordered when she died due to complications during premature childbirth. Only
the end product or the baby seems to be important to the clinics and the
surrogate parents. In a country like India where so many women die every day
even during normal childbirth, there’s hardly anyone to raise his or her voice
against the death of a single surrogate mother.
Medical clinics
that legitimately conduct surrogacy procedures are highly unregulated and
unrestrained. It has also been reported that some IVF clinics in India transfer
three to four embryos into the womb of a surrogate mother at a time. This is
done in order to ensure pregnancy and it is against the international practice
of transferring only one embryo into surrogate’s womb at a time.
The surrogate
mothers are not given a copy of the written contract which is signed between
surrogate mother, the commissioning parents and fertility physicians because of
which they are not even aware of the clauses of the contract.
As commercial
surrogacy has become a booming industry in India, the competition between
clinics offering surrogacy services has increased and this obviously puts the
surrogate mother’s health in danger. The surrogacy contracts in India need to
be more transparent the surrogate mothers need adequate protection from law
that prevents any kind of exploitation.
It is said that the
much-awaited Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Bill, which aims to
regulate surrogacy in India, is likely to be introduced during the ongoing
Parliament session.
Other than this,
the Union health ministry proposes to introduce two key Bills — the Bio-medical
and Health
Regulation Bill and the Recognition of New Systems of Medicine
Bill, 2014 in the Winter Session.
Thailand was rocked
by several surrogacy scandals recently. One involved
an Australian couple who took home a healthy baby girl born
from a Thai surrogate mother but left behind her twin brother who had Down’s
syndrome. Thailand’s interim parliament has given initial approval to a bill
banning commercial surrogacy, and set a punishment for offenders of up to 10
years in prison. India ought to catch up with the surrogacy laws which have
been implemented throughout the world such as in Thailand or countries like US
and UK if not on economic then at least on humanitarian grounds and protect the
thousands of poor and ignorant women who are being exploited mentally as well
as physically throughout our country.
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