The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill pending since 2016 allows only Indian citizens without children – adopted or biological
Actor Sunny Leone has the tardy Indian legislative process to thank for her twin bundles of joy.
Had the Indian Parliament passed the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016 with all its stringent conditions for commissioning surrogacy, Leone and her husband Andrew Weber may not have been celebrating their twin sons now. The Canadian-born Leone announced on Monday about their “biological” sons born through surrogacy and shared a picture of the happy family along with adopted daughter Nisha.
Under the proposed law that has since been scrutinised by a Parliamentary panel, but is yet to be introduced in the Rajya Sabha, the intending couple – that is the couple seeking to become parents through surrogacy – have to be Indian citizens. Neither Leone nor Weber are Indian citizens. Additionally the couple need a certification that one of them is infertile and cannot have a child – biologically or adopted.
The Bill allows surrogacy only for Indian citizens who are married for at least five years, are aged between 23 to 50 for women and 26 to 55 years for men, provided they do not have any living child, biological or otherwise. A child who is mentally or physically challenged or suffers from a life threatening disease does not count.
There are also additional conditions such as the surrogate mother being related to the commissioning couple and cannot be paid for bearing the child; but Leone and Weber might not have made the cut because of their citizenship status and the fact that they have an adopted daughter.
The surrogacy Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in November 2016 and referred to the standing committee. The report of the committee, tabled in August 2017 found several shortcomings in the Bill, right from its spirit or banning commercial surrogacy to the long pendency of the bill to regulate artificial reproductive technologies that necessitated a stand-alone surrogacy bill.
“Permitting women to provide reproductive labour for free to another person but preventing them from being paid for their reproductive labour is grossly unfair and arbitrary…Pregnancy is not a one minute job but a labour of nine months with far reaching implications regarding her health, her time and her family,” the committee observed.
