Category: AR Commercial Surrogacy
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Why Surrogates Are Still Passive Deliverers Of Service, With Few Rights
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…
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Surrogacy Regulation is Stuck Between Market, Family and State
Through the years, India’s stand on surrogacy has varied from a medico-liberal to a carceral model, but the best safeguards for surrogates would be empowerment rather than relying on the market or the state for protection. Law has long been the site of intense political, social and economic contest over women’s reproductive labour. Surrogacy is…
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Tracing the journey, and flaws, of the surrogacy bill
The government has tried to regulate surrogacy for over a decade. Starting with the permissive 2005 guidelines of the Indian Council for Medical Research, the government has proposed increasingly restrictive bills in 2008, 2010, 2013 and 2014 and has, through notifications of the ministry of home affairs, sought to exclude prospective parents on the basis…
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What the new laws regulating fertility services in India say | In Focus podcast
Dr Prabha Kotiswaran speaks to us on whether the new laws protect the interests of couples who want a baby and of the women who would be egg donors or surrogates This month, two bills dealing with fertility services have been passed by Parliament — the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill 2021, and the Surrogacy…
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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…
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New surrogacy law ignores the labour involved in pregnancy
Surrogacy has been in the news recently, most because of actor Priyanka Chopra. But this wasalso the week that the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act (SRA), 2021 came into force. In an interview to Sunday Times. Prabha Kotiswaran, a professor of law and justice at King’s College, London who has extensively researched surrogacy laws in India, discusses…
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Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill needs a thorough review
Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill raises constitutional, medico-legal, regulatory concerns. It needs a thorough review. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan introduced the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 (Bill) in the Lok Sabha on September 14. Its aim is to regulate ART banks and clinics, allow safe and ethical practice of ARTs and protect women and…
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Counterproductive Regulation of Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Review of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill, 2020
This article critically engages with the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Regulation) Bill, 2020 (ART Bill 2020) which is set to draw curtains on a regulatory journey of more than a decade and a half to culminate in a highly restrictive approach. Engaging with the provisions of this Bill, the article foregrounds that one of the important…
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Regulating Reproductive Technologies: A Blow to Inclusive Family Forms
The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 was tabled in the Lok Sabha in September 2020. It was referred to the department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, which submitted its 129th report on the ART Bill, 2020 on 17 March 2021. This article critically engages with the recommendations of this report. Attempts at regulating…
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Divine labours, devalued work: the continuing saga of India’s surrogacy regulation
This article offers a feminist critique of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill,2019. Fifteen years since the first proposed regulation of assisted repro-ductive technologies and surrogacy, the 2019 Bill leaves much to bedesired. It reflects a limited understanding of the complexities of surro-gacy, is discriminatory in its approach, is plagued by lack of clarity, isunrealistic and most importantly, does not include adequate safeguardsfor…