India: The government seeks to limit “procreative tourism”

Doctor Nayna Patel, pioneer of surrogacy, with a surrogate mother at Anand, in the northwest of India, in 2011..

Although India has become a world centre for surrogate pregnancies following the legalization of the practice in 2002, it could impose severe limits on this activity. The government proposed a bill forbidding it to foreigners and non-resident Indians on August 24th. According to the information agency of the foreign missions of Paris, Eglises d’Asie (EDA) on September 19, 2016, the text will be presented to the winter session of the federal parliament by the BJP, the nationalist Hindu party in power.

Entitled Assisted Reproductive Technologies Regulation Bill, the law would allow only men and women who have been married for over five years, and who have no children, to avail themselves of the services of a surrogate mother. Financial remuneration will now be forbidden, except to cover medical costs. Surrogate mothers will only be authorized to carry the child(ren) of another couple once in their lives, and must already have borne one child to term. Moreover, the surrogate mother and the couple requesting the surrogacy must be “closely related”.

According to government statistics, 2000 Indian and foreign couples have used surrogate mothers. According to a study led by the UN, there are 3000 “fertility” clinics in India, generating income to the tune of 355 million euros annually. According to EDA, the “salary” for a pregnancy is approximately equivalent to seven years’ income in rural areas.

(Sources: kipa-apic.ch/EDA -- DICI no. 341 dated September 30, 2016)

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