Surrogacy Bill in India: The Surrogate Mother

Surrogacy is a term meaning a woman carrying a child for its intended parents via different technique of fertility, including IVF implementation. She is compensated for carrying the child; hence the term is commercial surrogacy.

In spite of the fact that surrogacy involves a lot of money and has slowly evolved into a multi billion industry, surrogacy still does not pay well for the Indian surrogate mothers, who happen to get just a tenth of what the U.S surrogate mothers get.

This is an unbalanced service where the mothers are exploited physically, mentally. Even globally one hears such cases of exploitation associated with surrogacy. For instance a Japanese woman who acted as the surrogate mother for an American couple was left with one of the twins she delivered as the couple did not accept one of the twins, because the twin had ‘Down Syndrome’.

This highlights the fact that surrogacy has its own of pro’s and con’s. Not surprisingly, this surrogacy bill has created a great deal of verbal confrontation both nationally as well as globally. Perhaps there is a new grammar in terms of life choices and the varied opinions about birth and death. But the very thought of legal surrogacy is promising for the future of the surrogate mothers who need to be protected by the laws passed.

We should likewise contemplate on the abuse of ladies for the sake of commercial surrogacy. In 2014 Al Jazeera showcased stories of Indian ladies who were misused for the sake of commercial surrogacy. While these women were carrying the babies for 9 months, there were no facilities available for these mothers for giving birth in a proper way.

According to me, this is in fact a trade associated with the life and the circumstances of a woman who could sometimes be exploited to fulfil the cause of giving birth to a baby. The emotional content of this scenario pressurises the women to economise the link between the mother and a child just for the sake of providing a mother her wanted child through surrogacy.

The draft tries to take care of this issue in general while there is positiveness around it, the bill still lingers with a doubt about the effects and positiveness the bill still fails to talk about and initiate.

Arunav Baruah