Health Minister JP Nadda Introduced The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016 in the noisy Lok Sabha debating over the demonetisation issue. The bill once made into law will put a complete ban on commercial surrogacy in India. Strict rules will be followed for altruistic surrogacy for real and needy couples only.
Only couples who are legally married for five years and have a certificate from the doctors stating that they are medically fit to produce a child will be allowed surrogacy. Only Women within the age group of 23 to 50 years old and men between the age group of 26 to 55 years old will be eligible.
The bill only allows Indian citizen couples to avail surrogacy. No foreign national or even NRIs and PIOs will be allowed to seek surrogacy in India. Single Parents, Homosexuals and live-in couples will not be allowed anymore. Even the couples who already have children will not be able to seek surrogacy although they can adopt another child.
There are even more strict guidelines in the bill. The surrogate mother can only be a close relative who is married and has at least one healthy biological child. Finally, but not the last condition is that a woman can be a surrogate mother only once in her lifetime.
With this law coming into practice, a number of unethical activities related to surrogacy will come to an end. India did not have any law governing surrogacy because of which the country was becoming a surrogacy hub. Couples from different countries exploited the situation by taking undue advantages from surrogate mothers. A number of cases of abandoning the children born out of surrogacy also came to the forefront. This bill certainly seeks to protect women from getting exploited in the name of money and also ensures the rights of the child born through surrogacy.
