New Delhi: India’s new laws on surrogacy, meant to prevent exploitative practices, still do not fully recognise the surrogate’s rights to full economic, medical, legal, and physical protection, says legal scholars and gender activists. This lack of reproductive justice also extends to discriminatory rules on who deserves to be a parent through surrogacy.

The two laws passed in December 2021 – the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, and the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 – have been in the making for nearly 13 years.