Surrogacy in India: Ethical and legal aspect

Abstract

India has emerged as a surrogacy capital and destination for couples from different countries, in the past two decades. Fertility clinics operating across India, offering artificial insemination, IVF and surrogacy services to Indian citizens and foreign couples have increased dramatically. With the boom in surrogacy, there are increased instances of complex legal and ethical issues. Incidents of unethical practices such as exploitation of surrogate mothers, selective breeding, abandoning of children have increased. This paper highlights the various case scenarios in India and the timeline of various regulations brought by the government of India to regulate surrogacy services. Various guidelines and regulation bills across the period have been discussed in simple tables with the up to date surrogacy regulation bill of 2019. Issues not addressed in the recent Indian regulation have also been discussed.