The humpty-dumpty-esque tale of two laws

The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha recently passed the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2021 (ART) and the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2021 (SRB). Both laws were once a consolidated law which sat on a wall like ‘Humpty Dumpty’ for years.

But in 2016, the nationalist rage against foreigners exploiting Indian women’s wombs led Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall. The SRB was introduced as a standalone law in 2016 leaving the ART to catch up.