New law envisages ''altruistic'' surrogacy

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, Aug 23

Indian surrogacy law is set for change with the Union Cabinet likely to take up a draft legislation tomorrow for regulating the booming sector. The draft Bill was recently finalised by a Group of Ministers(GoM) chaired by Sushma Swaraj and comprising Health Minister JP Nadda, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Badal.

The GoM finalised a draft backing a blanket ban on commercial surrogacy and availability of surrogacy services only for married Indian couples.

The couples should have been married for five years and should have tried natural modes of childbirth before accessing surrogacy which won’t be permitted as the first option.

The draft law is set to ban foreigners, individuals and persons belonging to the LGBT community from surrogacy services, which the GoM wants to be "altruistic" in nature.

The GoM is also learnt to have agreed on allowing a surrogate mothera to lend a womb only once.

The new draft Bill will also detail the entitlements of children born from surrogacy and clarify that couples accessing surrogacy will accept the child, notwithstanding his disability or the fact that twins or triplets have been born. Non-acceptance of children will be made a crime, it is learnt.

The draft Bill also talks of establishing a National Surrogacy Board and State Surrogacy Boards and will designate authorities at the district level to review the eligibility of couples intending to engage surrogates. In "altruistic" surrogacy, the assumption would be infertile couples will be helped out by friends and family voluntarily and exploitation of commercial surrogates will end.