India finally wants to regulate commercial surrogacy?

You have all seen them the articles about various fertility treatments gone wrong from India. We are talking about women well over their natural fertile ages conceiving babies through IVF, like the 66 year old who birthed triplets, or the 70 year old IVF mom, who is dying less than two years after getting a daughter. Somewhat dubious surrogacy stories from India are also in the news all the time. Now, the Financial Times reports, India is thinking about regulating fertility treatments and is working on drafting a law.

The new law is not targeting the domestic IVF business, but is hoping to put an end to unethical commercial surrogacy practices. If the proposed law passes, a national database of surrogate mothers will be set up, and fertility clinics dealing with surrogacy and surrogate mothers will be monitored. If this law does end up coming into force something that the Indian parliament will ultimately decide experts estimate that it is mainly international commercial surrogacy that will be affected.

One aspect of the new law that I would welcome is that fertility clinics would be limited in what they are and are not allowed to do. Instead of arranging the entire surrogacy arrangements, as many clinics do now, they would be limited to facilitating the IVF procedure to implant embryos into the surrogates uteri. International couples hoping to become parents with the help of Indian surrogate mothers would have to provide evidence that the future children would receive their citizenship without problems. This is something that has caused many complications in the past, and the new law would ensure the baby s status is secure, something that I think is beneficial to everyone involved in a surrogacy journey. Furthermore, if the proposals are accepted, surrogate mothers would not be able to carry more than five pregnancies to term, and the number of embryos that could be implanted through IVF would be restricted.

After becoming aware of all the ethical questions linked to Indian surrogacy, I very much hope the Indian parliament will vote in favor of this law, and that it will be enforced, which is admittedly a lot to hope for considering India s track record. What are your opinions? Do you think the law will pass? Do you think it would be a positive change or not?