Bill stuck, no check on surrogacy business

New Delhi (Indian Express/Abantika Ghosh) : Earlier this month, a 28-year-old woman in Madhya Pradesh's Satna gave birth to 10 still-born babies. While multiple pregnancies are not unusual, pregnancies with three or more babies are almost always associated with assisted reproductions. In July, an NGO released findings of a survey that exposed largescale exploitation of surrogate mothers by forcing them to stay away from families in shelter homes, handing them Rs 3-4 lakh for a pregnancy that is actually creating business worth 10 times that amount. Several cities of Gujarat, including Ahmedabad and Anand, have become surrogacy hubs of India.

Lack of coherent guidelines on assisted reproductive techniques and surrogacy have over the years caused suffering and cost several lives, yet a legislation that was to have brought some method to the madness continues to hang fire over, among other things, moral debates about the sexual orientation of parents and their marital status.
Yet another Parliament session has passed by and the Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ART) Bill 2010 — in the drafting stage for three years now and in the pipleine for a decade — is not even ready to go to the cabinet.