The availability of high quality medical infrastructure, huge international demand, and cheap surrogates has boosted commercial surrogacy business in India.
The exact scale of surrogacy business in India cannot be answered, but according to Confederation of Indian Industry it is a 2.3 billion dollar business with almost 3000 hospitals and clinics involved.
Further, Indian Council of Medical Research believes that every year around 2000 children are born through this process in fertility clinics across India.
The Indian Council of Medical Research and the Law Commission of India have given the following guidelines regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology procedures:
- Surrogacy arrangement, containing terms, will continue to be governed by contract amongst parties.
- A surrogacy arrangement should provide for financial support for surrogate child and surrogate mother.
- Right to privacy of donor as well as surrogate mother should be protected.
- The birth certificate of the surrogate child should contain the name(s) of the commissioning parent(s) only.
- Sex-selective surrogacy should be prohibited.
In November 2015, Supreme Court of India put a blanket ban on foreigners using surrogacy clinics in India.
Now, time will tell if this ban will be effective!
The government has now tabled the much needed Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill in the Indian Parliament and hopefully it will be passed in the ongoing session.
