Everyone deserves the joy of parenthood. Science has made sure that surrogacy can make families happy but the law needs to complement it too. People may seek a surrogacy arrangement when pregnancy is medically impossible, when pregnancy risk is too dangerous for the intended mother, or when a single man or a male couple wish to have a child. Surrogacy is considered as one of many assisted reproductive technologies.
We look at the new Surrogacy Bill cleared by the Cabinet that bans commercial surrogacy and allows only altruistic surrogacy, that too by close relatives and says its for some ethical reasons. The bill only allows Indian married couple who have been married for at least 5 years can opt for it. The point is if the couples already know they can’t have a baby, then for what reason they should wait for this long period and one more important thing is why the government is bothering about the age the intended parents and the surrogate.
To obtain a certificate of eligibility from the appropriate authority, the surrogate mother has to be: (i) a close relative of the intending couple; (ii) a married woman having a child of her own; (iii) 25 to 35 years old; (iv) a surrogate only once in her lifetime and all this clause are simply silly because how can someone find does the surrogate mother is surrogate only once in her lifetime, there is scientific method to find it. If the relatives don’t come forward as a surrogate then the only chance of parenthood is denied. Instead, the government should make the laws much more strict in protecting the rights of the surrogate mother and child.
The draft bill bars gays, single persons and live-in couples from opting for surrogacy. Is the government playing nanny with a regressive bill? Is the bill protecting the rights of women, as the government claims, or denies them freedom of choice? And isn't altruistic surrogacy another form of pressure on women?
People who are making this a moral issue, please stop and think! Just because someone thinks that adopting kids that are orphans is a better decision does not mean that we should impose that ideal on others. In a truly free country, a person should be allowed to use surrogacy as a means of becoming a parent, irrespective of their marital status. Same goes with adoption. Surrogacy shouldn't be banned. Instead, the government should assist companies to spread awareness about it. Everyone wishes to have a baby of their own the only chance for that is denied through this regulation. Many foreigners come to India in search of surrogate mothers because their laws do not allow it. Dreams of many infertile couples have fulfilled here.
I seems IVF has become more widely available in the years. India, once the largest global surrogacy market due to its earlier lenient regulation. But minimal regulations are a perk for the commissioning couples but leave the women serving as surrogates extremely vulnerable to exploitation. That is not right. Such a procedure must be strictly regulated and ensure safety for surrogate mom and intended parents. The contract which protects all rights both tended parents and surrogate mother. The last-mentioned get fixed payment and has no rights and obligations towards the child. Baby is the greatest happiness in most of them lives.
Just imagine a single mother struggling to raise her child, this surrogacy money would make a pillar for her life. It's not exploitation if she agrees wholeheartedly. But it is exploitation when her husband forced her to do so and take all of her money. The pain of infertility and when infertile couple holds their baby through surrogacy, imagine their happiness. We have emotions and pains, we are humans.
There exist the beauty to have your own kids, that we can see our habits, face of our loved ones (wife, father, grand in-laws) in our kids. WHY ADOPTION has to be an option over surrogacy, why would someone kill the genetic DNA of my father, mother, maternal - grandmother, paternal - grandmother, grandfather BY ADOPTION, adoption doesn't promise good gene, we don't even know the genetic background, adoption is not an equivalent to surrogacy. Surrogacy permits a couple to carry on some genetic information of there clan, creed, caste, community. Adoption is not a solution to infertility in all the cases and single parent why can't have surrogate since even people who are married to send their children to hostel schools.
Surrogacy is good and a medical process, it should be legalized and regulated, for good welfare of surrogate, insurance of health and pension should be made on the name of surrogate by parents. Really bad, since women nowadays due to career-oriented lifestyle, have marriage at 30years + age, then if she came to know that she cannot bear a pregnancy after few years she has to wait for 5 years, and even the relatives can deny becoming a surrogate, its oppressive for me as women. Indian women already face so much oppression from relatives, and now if they decide their happiness and deny me children than how could this bill be taken as women empowerment, surrogacy is a must, and old women who have their kids via natural pregnancy cannot decide my fate by having a joke union committee, or a minister, who hate homosexuals and single parents
We need to look at surrogacy through the perspective of human rights and that is the best way. Human rights are the laws encapsulated international treaties that governments sign on to and order to be bound by and in the surrogacy context that there are three different parties that we need to be thinking about when we think about human rights, first and foremost there are the children they should be the centre of our attention. Secondly, there are the women who are surrogates what are their rights and finally, there are the intended parents do they have any rights.
The sale involves paying money for what we are buying but surrogacy is not like that payments are staggered throughout the gestation period and if the child dies for some reason the surrogate still gets the full payment. This is not buying and selling it is about paying for the services that the surrogate is providing.
Many surrogates say that this is their only opportunity to send their child to school, to make a living, to buy a house and to actually get out of poverty, so don't tell them not to be a surrogate. Finally the intended parents, they have no rights as such to start a family, but there is a right not to be discriminated against. In India only married heterosexual couples can have a child through surrogacy and here comes the discrimination. Its is the discrimination against gay couples, against unmarried straights couples on the basis of their marital status or their sexual orientation. So the intended parents do have the right not to be discriminated against.
The question raised by Prof.Mohan Rao at JNU in the documentary “Womb for Rent” is very much relevant “is it because it is the women's womb? And we have no respect for women in this country. How comes the laws don’t allow you to sell your kidney but rent your womb?”
It is important to love and respect children's dignity and that we treat them as autonomous individuals and not as properties and if take that philosophical approach to surrogacy we are likely to bring up with a much better framework.
