I must say i was not totally shocked when i read the news about the Surrogacy regulation bill 2016, i kind of was expecting the clauses wherein they would ban commercial surrogacy and allow only altruistic surrogacy because they had modelled the bill based on UK's HFEA-ACT which everyone knows is a big failure and shows that India has still not been able to rid itself of the tentacles of imperialism, now why they decided to copy the HFEA act instead of taking the views of the major players of the surrogacy Industry in India is anybody's guess!!
Various rumours are floating around as to the actual reasons but no one knows for sure.
one of the main reasons i feel they have banned commercial surrogacy is because there was tremendous pressure on the Govt. of India to reopen surrogacy for foreigners which they had stopped in october 2015, because if they would allow it for Indians then why not for foreigners? so in a typical knee jerk reaction which we have now come to expect from our Leaders they decided to ban it rather than regulate it, they patted and tweeted themselves no end and congratulated each other for passing a bill which is nothing but 10 to 12 clauses because it has not been put in the public domain yet.
Before i dissect the provisions of the proposed bill and some of the statements made in public domain by Minister of External Affairs,i would like to inform the public especially the Indian Intended Parents whose messages and queries i am gettting in droves that this is yet a bill which has been proposed and passed by the union cabinet of the current NDA government, as to the best of my knowledge and i am not a constitutional expert by any stretch of my imagination, this bill has to be put up for public discussion as it is different from the Previous ART bill-2015 and then before a parliamentary committee which will include members of the opposition parties followed by tabling and passing in the lower and upper houses of parliament,followed by signature of the president and publication in the official gazette.
if we check the track record of the present government in implementing important Bills and passing them in parliament and the most important bill they have passed is the GST bill-Goods and Services Tax- for which the time taken was about 2 years as the NDA came to power in 2014
if we keep in mind that Surrogacy is perhaps the least important of issues plaguing our Society then we can expect the same time frame or more which would be by 2018 or slightly more
however one can never say as to how Governments react in specific situations since they have political compulsions and gains in Mind.
so below are my personal views regarding the very very Amateur provisions of the surrogacy Bill 2016
1.Broadly the Bill allows ‘altruistic surrogacy’ for married heterosexual couples. The others- Single,Unmarried,Gay,Live in couples must adopt and can't take recourse to surrogacy, i can understand the bit about Homo sexuals because Gay Relationships are not recognised by the Regressive Indian laws which were drafted by the British in the early 19th century, however Single Women can have a baby through IVF but not through Surrogacy, so a woman who is single but born without a uterus or has had her uterus removed is condemned to a life of Childlessness!! why? maybe the Government things it is her Bad karma!!
2. surrogacy would now be restricted to ‘childless couples, who are medically unfit to have children by taking help from a close relative- a process that they call ‘altruistic surrogacy’.however Altruistic surrogacy is where only reasonable expenses are paid towards the medical and surgical upkeep of the surrogate mother without paying any gift or cash directly to the surrogate mother.
however the Minister failed to address what happens if one does have ‘close’ relatives who were willing to help?
the Government probably things that it is again their bad karma and they be bereft of the joys of parenthood.
3.Altruistic surrogacy restricted to close relatives has been a failure worldwide maybe because a potential surrogate, closely related to the childless couple , may not be sure that she could cut off the emotionally from the baby immediately at birth.
4.there is also a very high chance that in a patriarchal society like India, close relatives will be forced to act as surrogate mothers,that will be the real exploitation of women, the minister or the government does not seem to have taken this fact into consideration at all.
5.If the foetus is discovered to have a problem, what happens if the surrogate mother decides she does not want an abortion for religious or emotional reasons? Will the parents, who are compelled by law to ‘not abandon the child, born out of a surrogacy procedure, under any circumstances’, find themselves capable of taking care of the child? the MTP act clearly states the conditions in which a medical termination of pregnancy is allowed.
6.The surrogate mother, according to the bill, has to be a married woman with at least one child of her own and she should be a close relative. In the scenarios listed above, what happens to her own family? her own children?
7.who pays for the Delivery and hospital charges and paediatric charges?
8.Who pays for post-natal care? To what extent is the couple who want the baby responsible for it? What if the surrogate mother slips into post-natal complications or needs a hysterectomy and needs long term care? Who will take the responsibility?
the Government has not answered any of these things because they know that once this bill becomes a law no one will undergo a surrogacy procedure so they don't need to think about all these things at all.
9.What happens in case of breakdown of family relations?What then?
and pray how will the Government monitor these surrogacy cases within the family? will they be deploying cctv camera's inside people's homes?
10.how will i as a practitioner verify if the surrogate mother is a close relative or not?
let’s move on to the other insane and impractical things the bill says.
you have to be legally married for five years.So, if you’re married but only for 4 years and 11 months then wait-it's your bad karma!!
If you decide to focus on your carrier and marry late at say 35 which is not uncommon now a days wait until you turn 40 and your ovarian reserve declines and then you can no longer use your own eggs to have a baby!! you may think of using an egg donor but wait- the government says again egg donation can only come from a close relative, so if you are 40 and you dont have a sister then remain childless.
If you are a live-in couple, again not uncommon now a days- your bad karma!!
If you are an unmarried man or woman- your bad karma!!
If you are divorced or seperated- your bad karma!
If you have lost your husband/wife to death- your bad Karma!!
If you are a homosexual - you are anyways a criminal according to Indian laws!! criminals cant have babies!!!
If you have a biological child and want one more, -your bad karma!!
If you have adopted a child and want a biological one now- your bad karma!
If you are middle class and cannot go abroad for surrogacy- your bad karma
If you were born in India but now live abroad, or a now a citizen of a different country- your bad karma. You can’t ask your sister to help.
If you are a divorcee parent who has married a second time -- which means you have a child from your earlier marriage- your bad karma- Indian culture and Ethos which the minister repeatedly emphasised on encourages folks to stay in a bad marriage!!
The Surrogacy regulation bill basically means the government has disqualified most of the citizens from opting for ‘altruistic surrogacy’. It has decided to step into your bed room and tell you what to do with your lives and are taking control of what should have been a very private and personal journey, curtailed your freedom of choice and the Government will now decide who can have a child and who cant and our Judiciary -the champions of Liberty will sit back and watch!!
Of course- you are free to adopt!! Government needs to understand that adoption is a highly personal choice. Not everyone is emotionally evolved to be an adoptive parent and forcing those who don't wish to adopt will be the biggest exploitation of the parents and child!!
Genuine folks who wish to adopt are harrassed by CARA and made to wait endlessly-sometimes even upto 5 years
‘Kitne hi itne udhaharan hamare saamne, aur badi celebrities ke hain, jinka apna bachcha ek nahi do-do hain, aur beta aur beti dono hai, toh bhi unhone surrogate child kiya hai. Toh yeh zaroorat ke liye toh hai anumati, shauk ke liye nahi hai. Aur na is liye hai ki kyonki patni prasav pida nahi sehna chahati, is liye chalo surrogate child kar lo. Yeh koi anand ki cheez nahi hai.’
This is what Mrs.Swaraj our esteemed and privileged Minister of External affairs said and she was implying about the Bollywood celebrities having a baby through surrogacy even after having two grown up children.
so the government does not want Mr.and Mrs.Money bags from having a baby through surrogacy,however she failed to understand that these cases even if true which i don't believe them to be true, constitute maybe 0.1% of the total surrogacy cases, the majority of people opting for surrogacy are middle class infertile couples who have no other recourse to have their own genetic baby.
with this bill in place,a shahrukh khan or an Aamir khan or any other rich person will not be stopped from having a baby through surrogacy. If not in India, they can easily go to the USA and pay 2 crores and have a baby through surrogacy and you know what their baby will automatically get US citizenship as well!!
India may now be listed as the seventh richest country in the world, but the inescapable fact is that the per capita income is lesser than some of the african countries and still there are starvation deaths. Poor survive on grants by the government and less than 2 dollars per day. Surrogacy is empowerment for such women but the government does not want the poor to escape from their daily grind and hope for a better future for themselves and their Children!! If that happens how will they exploit them for votes!!
sadly the Government failed to meet or ask any surrogate mother for whom they so hurriedly passed this bill as to what their views are!! an RTI(Right to Information) Query was filed with the ICMR-Indian council of medical research which is the nodal body to monitor Fertility cli
nics as to how many complaints they had received regarding the exploitation of Surrogate mother? the predictable answer was -ZERO!!
Various rumours are floating around as to the actual reasons but no one knows for sure.
one of the main reasons i feel they have banned commercial surrogacy is because there was tremendous pressure on the Govt. of India to reopen surrogacy for foreigners which they had stopped in october 2015, because if they would allow it for Indians then why not for foreigners? so in a typical knee jerk reaction which we have now come to expect from our Leaders they decided to ban it rather than regulate it, they patted and tweeted themselves no end and congratulated each other for passing a bill which is nothing but 10 to 12 clauses because it has not been put in the public domain yet.
Before i dissect the provisions of the proposed bill and some of the statements made in public domain by Minister of External Affairs,i would like to inform the public especially the Indian Intended Parents whose messages and queries i am gettting in droves that this is yet a bill which has been proposed and passed by the union cabinet of the current NDA government, as to the best of my knowledge and i am not a constitutional expert by any stretch of my imagination, this bill has to be put up for public discussion as it is different from the Previous ART bill-2015 and then before a parliamentary committee which will include members of the opposition parties followed by tabling and passing in the lower and upper houses of parliament,followed by signature of the president and publication in the official gazette.
if we check the track record of the present government in implementing important Bills and passing them in parliament and the most important bill they have passed is the GST bill-Goods and Services Tax- for which the time taken was about 2 years as the NDA came to power in 2014
if we keep in mind that Surrogacy is perhaps the least important of issues plaguing our Society then we can expect the same time frame or more which would be by 2018 or slightly more
however one can never say as to how Governments react in specific situations since they have political compulsions and gains in Mind.
so below are my personal views regarding the very very Amateur provisions of the surrogacy Bill 2016
1.Broadly the Bill allows ‘altruistic surrogacy’ for married heterosexual couples. The others- Single,Unmarried,Gay,Live in couples must adopt and can't take recourse to surrogacy, i can understand the bit about Homo sexuals because Gay Relationships are not recognised by the Regressive Indian laws which were drafted by the British in the early 19th century, however Single Women can have a baby through IVF but not through Surrogacy, so a woman who is single but born without a uterus or has had her uterus removed is condemned to a life of Childlessness!! why? maybe the Government things it is her Bad karma!!
2. surrogacy would now be restricted to ‘childless couples, who are medically unfit to have children by taking help from a close relative- a process that they call ‘altruistic surrogacy’.however Altruistic surrogacy is where only reasonable expenses are paid towards the medical and surgical upkeep of the surrogate mother without paying any gift or cash directly to the surrogate mother.
however the Minister failed to address what happens if one does have ‘close’ relatives who were willing to help?
the Government probably things that it is again their bad karma and they be bereft of the joys of parenthood.
3.Altruistic surrogacy restricted to close relatives has been a failure worldwide maybe because a potential surrogate, closely related to the childless couple , may not be sure that she could cut off the emotionally from the baby immediately at birth.
4.there is also a very high chance that in a patriarchal society like India, close relatives will be forced to act as surrogate mothers,that will be the real exploitation of women, the minister or the government does not seem to have taken this fact into consideration at all.
5.If the foetus is discovered to have a problem, what happens if the surrogate mother decides she does not want an abortion for religious or emotional reasons? Will the parents, who are compelled by law to ‘not abandon the child, born out of a surrogacy procedure, under any circumstances’, find themselves capable of taking care of the child? the MTP act clearly states the conditions in which a medical termination of pregnancy is allowed.
6.The surrogate mother, according to the bill, has to be a married woman with at least one child of her own and she should be a close relative. In the scenarios listed above, what happens to her own family? her own children?
7.who pays for the Delivery and hospital charges and paediatric charges?
8.Who pays for post-natal care? To what extent is the couple who want the baby responsible for it? What if the surrogate mother slips into post-natal complications or needs a hysterectomy and needs long term care? Who will take the responsibility?
the Government has not answered any of these things because they know that once this bill becomes a law no one will undergo a surrogacy procedure so they don't need to think about all these things at all.
9.What happens in case of breakdown of family relations?What then?
and pray how will the Government monitor these surrogacy cases within the family? will they be deploying cctv camera's inside people's homes?
10.how will i as a practitioner verify if the surrogate mother is a close relative or not?
let’s move on to the other insane and impractical things the bill says.
you have to be legally married for five years.So, if you’re married but only for 4 years and 11 months then wait-it's your bad karma!!
If you decide to focus on your carrier and marry late at say 35 which is not uncommon now a days wait until you turn 40 and your ovarian reserve declines and then you can no longer use your own eggs to have a baby!! you may think of using an egg donor but wait- the government says again egg donation can only come from a close relative, so if you are 40 and you dont have a sister then remain childless.
If you are a live-in couple, again not uncommon now a days- your bad karma!!
If you are an unmarried man or woman- your bad karma!!
If you are divorced or seperated- your bad karma!
If you have lost your husband/wife to death- your bad Karma!!
If you are a homosexual - you are anyways a criminal according to Indian laws!! criminals cant have babies!!!
If you have a biological child and want one more, -your bad karma!!
If you have adopted a child and want a biological one now- your bad karma!
If you are middle class and cannot go abroad for surrogacy- your bad karma
If you were born in India but now live abroad, or a now a citizen of a different country- your bad karma. You can’t ask your sister to help.
If you are a divorcee parent who has married a second time -- which means you have a child from your earlier marriage- your bad karma- Indian culture and Ethos which the minister repeatedly emphasised on encourages folks to stay in a bad marriage!!
The Surrogacy regulation bill basically means the government has disqualified most of the citizens from opting for ‘altruistic surrogacy’. It has decided to step into your bed room and tell you what to do with your lives and are taking control of what should have been a very private and personal journey, curtailed your freedom of choice and the Government will now decide who can have a child and who cant and our Judiciary -the champions of Liberty will sit back and watch!!
Of course- you are free to adopt!! Government needs to understand that adoption is a highly personal choice. Not everyone is emotionally evolved to be an adoptive parent and forcing those who don't wish to adopt will be the biggest exploitation of the parents and child!!
Genuine folks who wish to adopt are harrassed by CARA and made to wait endlessly-sometimes even upto 5 years
‘Kitne hi itne udhaharan hamare saamne, aur badi celebrities ke hain, jinka apna bachcha ek nahi do-do hain, aur beta aur beti dono hai, toh bhi unhone surrogate child kiya hai. Toh yeh zaroorat ke liye toh hai anumati, shauk ke liye nahi hai. Aur na is liye hai ki kyonki patni prasav pida nahi sehna chahati, is liye chalo surrogate child kar lo. Yeh koi anand ki cheez nahi hai.’
This is what Mrs.Swaraj our esteemed and privileged Minister of External affairs said and she was implying about the Bollywood celebrities having a baby through surrogacy even after having two grown up children.
so the government does not want Mr.and Mrs.Money bags from having a baby through surrogacy,however she failed to understand that these cases even if true which i don't believe them to be true, constitute maybe 0.1% of the total surrogacy cases, the majority of people opting for surrogacy are middle class infertile couples who have no other recourse to have their own genetic baby.
with this bill in place,a shahrukh khan or an Aamir khan or any other rich person will not be stopped from having a baby through surrogacy. If not in India, they can easily go to the USA and pay 2 crores and have a baby through surrogacy and you know what their baby will automatically get US citizenship as well!!
India may now be listed as the seventh richest country in the world, but the inescapable fact is that the per capita income is lesser than some of the african countries and still there are starvation deaths. Poor survive on grants by the government and less than 2 dollars per day. Surrogacy is empowerment for such women but the government does not want the poor to escape from their daily grind and hope for a better future for themselves and their Children!! If that happens how will they exploit them for votes!!
sadly the Government failed to meet or ask any surrogate mother for whom they so hurriedly passed this bill as to what their views are!! an RTI(Right to Information) Query was filed with the ICMR-Indian council of medical research which is the nodal body to monitor Fertility cli
