Lok Sabha passes surrogacy bill in likely boost for adoption in India

The surrogacy bill bans commercial renting of wombs, allows ‘altruistic surrogacy’, and has a provision for jail term up to 10 years

Neetu Chandra Sharma

New Delhi: Adoption may get a leg-up in India following the passage of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016, by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, banning commercial renting of wombs and allowing only “altruistic surrogacy”.

According to the Bill, all except legally married Indian couples who otherwise would not be able to conceive will be barred from opting for surrogacy. Besides, only a close relative can become a surrogate for “medically proven infertile” couples.

Experts claim that the stringent rules and regulations may encourage couples to turn toward adoption. “As surrogacy services were easily available, people used to hire a surrogate for having a baby, no matter if they were married, single or same sex couples,” said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research.

“As commercial surrogacy will not be an option in the near future, intended single parents or couples willing to have a baby will look at adoption to fulfil the need. This may possibly boost the dismal adoption figures in India,” she said.

The draft law has a provision for a jail term of up to 10 years and a fine of ₹10 lakh for violations such as abandoning a child and choosing commercial surrogacy. “The decision is big and is in the interest of all women and children. There were reports of surrogates being harassed because of the dearth of regulation. In the Bill, altruistic surrogacy is legalized and commercial surrogacy is criminalized. We need to see with time how this will impact the adoption scenario in country, which is also a noble cause,” said Balram Bhargava, secretary, department of health research, ministry of health and family welfare.

From April 2017 to March 2018 only 3,276 children were adopted in India, according to the Central Adoption Resource Authority, ministry of women and child development.

Health minister J.P. Nadda termed the proposed legislation “historic”. “The aim of the bill was to stop commercial surrogacy but at the same time save families by allowing them to have children by using modern science. Only defined mother and family can avail of surrogacy and the same was not permitted for live-in partners or single parents,” Nadda said.

The Bill comes against the backdrop of reports of unethical practices, exploitation of surrogate mothers, abandonment of children born out of surrogacy and rackets around intermediaries importing human embryos and gametes were reported.

The Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha after an hour-long debate amid noisy protests by Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) members. Supriya Sule of the Congress tweeted, “Surrogacy is a moral, social and emotional issue concerning parenthood. There must not be a 5-year clause to prove infertility, when science and technology has progressed so much, why should the couple wait for that long a while to have a child through surrogacy?” “Bill must mould itself in a more modern shape by considering cases of potential single parents, widows, same sex couples who want to have children as well, especially after recent progressive judgments,” she said.

Source : https://www.livemint.com/Politics/hARv5G5wm1Fo2QQqQ43I3J/Lok-Sabha-passes-surrogacy-bill-in-likely-boost-for-adoption.html

For detail bill : http://164.100.47.4/BillsTexts/LSBillTexts/Asintroduced/257_LS_2016_Eng.pdf

Maharashtra Medical Council forms panel to regularise surrogacy

Mumbai : (DNA/ Santosh Andhale and Somita Pal) : In a first in India, the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) has decided to formulate rules and regulations on surrogacy and has formed a committee for the same. The step was taken after the Mumbai police commissioner wrote a complaint letter to the MMC alleging malpractice on part of city's three leading infertility experts, who are from the surrogacy sector.
MMC is a statutory body that has the power to suspend a doctor's licence if s/he is found guilty of malpractice.
Currently, the surrogacy treatment is unchecked, unsupervised and not regularised. According to sources, there are around 70-80 IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) centres in Mumbai and 200 in the state, with the numbers rising over the past few months. The cost of the treatment runs into lakhs.

Ministries differ on single surrogacy

Chandigarh (Ajay Sura/Times of India) :  It appears the ministry of health and family welfare and the ministry of home affairs (MHA) are not on the same page over the issue of singles opting for surrogacy in the country.
The divergent views came out recently before the Punjab and Haryana high court during the hearing of a plea filed by a Sudanese national against the Indian laws excluding single foreign nationals and unmarried couples from coming to India for purposes of surrogacy on medical visas.

Surrogacy stakeholders draw up guidelines

AHMEDABAD (Radha Sharma/Times of India) : Most of the women driving multimillion-dollar surrogacy industry in India by renting out their wombs to childless couples do so to beat poverty. Often, they are exploited by agents and even risk their lives.

While there is no legal framework enacted - the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, years after it was drafted, is yet to be passed - a handful of stakeholders have formed a society to assure surrogates get basic remuneration, compensation in medical crises and, most importantly, respect for carrying somebody's child for nine months and delivering happinessThe first-ever Indian Society for Third-Party Assisted Reproduction (INSTAR) has now been formed. Infertility experts, lawyers, embryologists and social workers from 15 states including Gujarat have joined hands to enforce self-imposed moral and ethical guidelines for the welfare of surrogates in India.

Surrogacy becomes family enterprise in Gujarat

Ahmedabad (Bharat Yagnik / Times of India) : While debates rage across the world over the exploitation of women who become surrogates in India, many daughters in the state are following in the footsteps of their mothers to rent their wombs and deliver themselves from poverty.
Renuka (23) recently delivered a boy for an Indian-American childless couple. Married at the age of 18, her in-laws never took her back after she delivered a child. She was staring at a life of being a domestic maid.

Infertility on the Rise

India Today Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie on surrogacy

This week, the magazine gives you a break from the hurly-burly of politics which seems more of the same-the disruptions in Parliament, the careening economy, the tumbling rupee, the electoral posturing and sop-giving. We tell a very human story up close and personal from the bustling town of Anand. A town, halfway between Ahmedabad and Vadodara in the heart of central Gujarat, which has long been synonymous with India's cooperative milk industry. It houses the head office of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, whose brand Amul sparked the White Revolution and continues to give India some of its most creative advertising through a chubby little 'butter girl' in a polka-dotted dress.

But Anand is now home to a different kind of cooperative cottage industry. It is fast emerging as an international destination for surrogate babies, and has so far provided childless parents from India and 34 other countries a chance to fulfil their aspirations. On August 5, a 28-year-old woman, now known as Surrogate No. 500, gave birth to a baby girl at Anand's Sat Kaival Hospital and Akanksha Infertility Clinic, inadvertently becoming a milestone that has come to define what the surrogacy boom is doing for women from the region. A single mother of two sons aged five and three, she earned Rs.2,000 a month doing housework. Being a surrogate for a couple from Lucknow has given her Rs.3 lakh now. "I can build my own house now," she says. Anand houses several others like her.

Govt set to allow visas to singles too for surrogacy

(Rahul Tripathi/Indian Express):Easing the surrogacy norms for foreigners, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has proposed that besides married couples, individuals — whether male or female — should also be allowed visas for the purpose. The current law allows only married couples to apply for visas on this ground.

However, foreign nationals will have to obtain medical visas for the purpose of surrogacy. They cannot use tourist visas."The new rules will, however, continue to bar gay or lesbian couples from hiring surrogate mothers in India. But one of the partners, either male or female, can get a medical visa. They can visit India for a period of one year, which can be extended by another six months," said a senior official. Couples have to be married for at least two years before qualifying for such visas.

At the time of seeking their "exit permit" from the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), all foreign nationals who take surrogate children from India will have to undergo DNA tests. "It is important to establish a genetic link through the DNA test," says the ministry's draft proposal.

The amendments are likely to be cleared after Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde returns from the US.

The MHA has also proposed that such foreigners should submit an undertaking at the Indian embassy or mission in their respective countries stating that the surrogate child born in India will be granted nationality of that country.

"To provide proper care and safety of the baby born from surrogacy and fair treatment to the mother, we have suggested a few amendments at the time of granting visas. The hospitals or clinics where such surrogacy is being performed must be recognised by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)," said a top MHA official.

The foreign applicants will also be required to submit a letter from the embassy of their country in India or their foreign minister stating that the country recognises surrogacy and the child to be born through the Indian surrogate mother will be permitted entry to their country as a biological child of the couple or individual commissioning the surrogacy. They must also furnish an undertaking stating that they will take care of the child.

Single foreigners may get surrogacy option

Aloke Tikku/Hindustan Times (New Delhi) :The Indian government has decided to revisit the home ministry ban on unmarried foreigners from entering the country to commission surrogate babies.

The home ministry had last July introduced a condition that entitled only heterosexual couples — married for at least two years — to get a medical visa for travel to India to commission surrogates.
The restriction was placed after instances of Germany and Japan refusing to give citizenship to infants born to surrogate mothers in India.

But the new rules — that also required the foreign government to promise to give such babies citizenship — barred single and gay foreigners from commissioning surrogacy. 

“We are reconsidering the decision with respect to foreigners who are single,” a senior government official told HT.
Dr Anoop Gupta at the Delhi IVF & Fertility Research Centre said the relaxation would come as a big relief. “This is a very positive development,” he said, since, once the relaxation is notified, it would benefit foreigners who are gay too.
The visa restriction had hit gay couples hard, who were hoping to start a family.

Back home, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) — that doubles up as the department of medical research — too had opposed the visa restriction. “If they can be trusted with an Indian child, they can certainly be trusted with their own,” an ICMR official had argued earlier.

Surrogacy 'leading to exploitation' of poor Indian women: Report

Washington (ANI) : Foreign couples hiring Indian surrogates is an unregulated industry that is completely dependent on vulnerable women, a report has said.

For many couples, the only hope to create a child of their own is to fertilize an egg in a test-tube and implant it in a surrogate.Indian clinics do that for a fraction of the usual cost.
The procedure in which doctors implant an embryo into the womb of a surrogate mother is a delicate operation. If all goes well, in nine months time, the surrogate will deliver a baby for a childless couple.

But the country's baby business has critics, like Dr. Ranjana Kumari.According to CBS News, Dr. Kumari argues that there so many Indian women who want to do this because the country has so many poor women. There are so many women who don't want to see their own child dying out of bad health, or not getting educated, not getting two meals a day. So that's why so many women are available, she added.Dr. Ranjana Kumari pointed out that the industry needs to be regulated.

According to the report, the stressed that the vulnerability of poverty is being exploited in this whole system, and it should be banned. The report pointed out that there are some clinics in India that give the surrogate mothers life insurance and medical care, even after the baby is born.But other clinics don't provide this care. Their primary concern is the baby because that's where they make their money.

सरोगसी अधिनियम २०११ : तज्ज्ञ समितीची स्थापना

आमदार देवेंद्र फडणवीस यांनी शुक्रवार १३ जुलै, २०१२ रोजी पावसाळी अधिवेशना दरम्यान विधान सभेत महाराष्ट्र साहाय्यक प्रजनन तंत्रज्ञान (नियमन) अधिनियम २०११ सरोगसी) या अशासकीय विधेयकावर चर्चा करून या विधेयकाची आवश्यकता पटवून दिली होती.आमदार फडणवीस यांच्या चर्चेनंतर मान. राज्यमंत्री फौजिया खान यांनी महाराष्ट्र साहाय्यक प्रजनन तंत्रज्ञान (नियमन) अधिनियम, २०११ (सरोगसी) याची तांत्रिक मुद्द्यांद्वारे तपासणी करण्यासाठी तसेच साहाय्यक प्रजनन तंत्रज्ञानातील विविध पैलूंचा अभ्यास करण्यासाठी तज्ज्ञ समितीची स्थापना करण्याचे आश्वासन दिले होते. त्यानुसार सार्वजनिक आरोग्य विभागाने ५ फेब्रुवारी, २०१३ च्या शासन निर्णयाद्वारे या कायद्यातील तरतुदींचा अभ्यास करण्यासाठी तज्ज्ञांची समिती स्थापन केली आहे. समितीचा कालावधी समिती स्थापन झाल्यापासून ६ महिन्यांचा असेल. या कालावधीत समिती अहवाल सरकारला सादर करेल.

Surrogacy cases on the rise in India

Mumbai (India.com) : A new report suggests that cases of surrogacy or ‘wombs for hire’ have increased in the past five years.  The research, published in The Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, reveals there is an increasing demand in the number of couples registering children to foreign surrogates.
 ‘Parental orders’ were granted following surrogacy to transfer the child from the surrogate mother to the commissioning parents, The Independent reported. This process, driven particularly by Indian agencies, has risen from 47 times in 2007 and 133 in 2011, the study said. But the real figures are believed to be much higher, and experts have warned of the increasing exploitation of women living in poverty who undergo the pregnancies to raise money.
 According to the study, women rent their wombs for about USD 16,000 to USD 32,000. Commercial surrogacy is permitted in the US and in many other countries including India, where it was legalised in 2002. But it is banned in Britain and only expenses may be paid making it difficult for UK couples where neither partner is able to bear children to find women prepared to volunteer for the role.
‘We have clinicians in this country who have links with overseas clinics. That was stopped with international adoption years ago. I don`t think the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has been strong enough on this,’ Marilyn Crawshaw, author of the research and senior lecturer at the University of York, said.
‘There is concern about child trafficking. The World Health Organisation held a meeting on this. Parents desperate to have children will pay thousands of pounds to foreign agencies to arrange the birth of their child. Natalie Gamble, a lawyer specialising in surrogacy cases, said important regulations were in place to protect children at risk from international trafficking, but there were no safeguards in place for overseas surrogacy.
The practise follows a decline in international adoptions, which has plummeted to its lowest point in 15 years.

Surrogacy gives birth to twiblings

Radha Sharma (Times of India), AHMEDABAD: Canadian businesswoman from Toronto, Lisa Parker, 38, became a mother of two recently within a gap of just one month! After four miscarriages and four failed invitro fertilization (IVF) cycles, she opted for two surrogate mothers instead of one to improve her chances of becoming a parent as quickly as possible. It worked. Both surrogates delivered what experts call not twins, not siblings - but 'twiblings'.
Lisa is among a growing breed of childless foreigners and NRIs who come to India and employ two surrogates to increase chances of finally having their own child. Lisa chose to come to Anand, often termed the global surrogacy capital. "I am in Anand since February, away from my business and family. I was desperate to become a parent and hence decided to undertake two cycles of treatment every month, apart using two surrogates. My son Rom came first followed by daughter Lee," Lisa, who has her own software firm, told TOI.
Such children are called twiblings since one sperm sample of the husband is split in two and used to make two different embryos. Technically, they would be twins if they were carried in a single womb but since they were carried in different wombs, they are siblings. Surrogacy professionals say twiblings are becoming commonplace as many childless couples do not mind spending more for implanting the embryos in two surrogates to maximize their chances.
In fact, twiblings are the outcome of the pace at which we live our lives these days. Many foreigners and NRIs desperately want a child, but they can't afford to stay back in India for long periods. It is not possible to totally abandon both their careers and their families. "I have used two surrogates each for three couple so far. In one case, the conception happened simultaneously while in another the woman as well as the surrogate became mothers," said Dr Naina Patel from Anand, considered a surrogacy expert.

Woman loses uterus after becoming surrogate mother thrice

By Kanchan Srivastava
Mumbai : A 30-year-old woman is paying a heavy price for agreeing to become a surrogate mother three times. Shahida Shaikh (name changed) who lives in penury, has lost her uterus, developed health complications and has also been divorced by her husband.

Shaikh who has studied till Std VII rues the day she accidentally met an agent (Shakira) who pushed her into renting her womb two years ago. She was taken to Bandra's Rotunda IVF centre and told that she was doing a noble job by helping a Norway-based couple.

"The agent and Dr Soumya Ramesh said I will be paid Rs2.25 lakh for doing a sacred job of delivering a baby to a childless couple. I agreed as my husband was not supporting me and I had to raise three children," Shaikh, a resident of Chembur, told DNA.

"After a painful procedure for embryo transfer, I was injected (Progesterone) daily. Unfortunately, my first attempt at surrogacy failed in 45 days and I got Rs10,000. The agent took Rs2,000," Shaikh said. "I was asked to rent my womb again. This time, the pregnancy failed in 50 days."

After two bad experiences, Shaikh decided not to compromise with her health again. She refused an 'offer' to become a surrogate mother for the third time. "But the agent said I will have to pay Rs25,000 to the doctor for saying a no. I had no option, but to agree. The doctors made me sign some papers in English, but did not tell me that I was playing with my life," Shaikh said.

The third pregnancy, Shaikh said, was unbearable since the first day.

"I was not able to breathe. I could not even perform any household chores. After I started bleeding in the third month, I was kept at a surrogacy home and at Powai's Hiranandani hospital for almost five months," she said.

DNA has a copy of Shaikh's medical report. It says she had complete placenta previa and placenta accreta during her pregnancy. In her case, the placenta lied completely over the cervix, blocking the baby's way out of the womb. Shaikh was also diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

Her condition worsened in the seventh month. "Dr Anita Soni, gynaecologist at Hiranandani hospital, said I would have to undergo a major surgery to save the baby. She said my uterus would also have to be removed to save my life. I agreed," Shaikh said.

A girl was born to Shaikh in February 2011, but she was not allowed to see her. The hospital also mentioned only four pregnancies (gravidity or the number of times a woman has been pregnant) instead of six in her antenatal records.

The delivery led to other complications. Shaikh's spine was swollen and her back was filled with pus. She was discharged in March without the baby, her uterus and even the promised money. "I got the money in instalments later after the baby was sent to Norway," Shaikh said.

Her woes, Shaikh says, have not ended. Her back is swollen again and she has become very weak. "I joined a catering firm, but lost my job due to frequent visits to the hospital. My eldest daughter, 13, quit school to do the household work. My husband also divorced me because of all this," said a weeping Shaikh.

She wants Rotunda to compensate her. "I was paid Rs15,000 and asked to turn egg donor. I went to do that, but the doctors said I could not," Shaikh said. She did not know that the doctors also performed hysterectomy on her. DNA has a copy of the records.

"They have even asked me to become a surrogacy agent," she said.

Dr Ramesh is on leave till December 30 and remained unavailable for comment. "This was her first successful attempt at a surrogacy case," said Dr Gautam Allahbadia who is MD at Rotunda. "I have a feeling that you plan to sensationalise routine medical life-saving events associated with pregnancy just to get a story published."

He further said: "The obstetric care of the surrogate is delivered at a tertiary care hospital (Dr Hiranandani hospital). Obstetric complications are unrelated to the surrogacy part. The attending obstetrician will be the best person to decide the course of treatment for any obstetric complication to save a patient's life."

Hiranandani hospital PRO Manish Joshi said he will check with Dr Anita Soni - under whose case Shaikh was admitted -and get back.

However, gynaecologists admit that Shaikh was used as a guinea pig. "She had delivered three babies and had two failed surrogacy attempts. Every doctor knows that it is dangerous. The doctors should have aborted the third surrogacy when there was heavy bleeding, but they did not just to make money. It is unethical and inhuman," said a gynaecologist.

High court advocate Vidnyan Davre said surrogacy uses a woman as a baby-producing machine. "Doctors make use of poor, illiterate women without taking their consent. We don't even have a law to regulate this unethical practice," he said.