Panel on surrogacy bill to seek feedback

The committee is expected to take a call on the option of permitting a single parent to have children through a surrogate. The permission will bring it in consonance with the adoption law that allows a single parent to adopt.

A parliamentary committee examining the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill will this week begin the process of seeking feedback from stakeholders on whether single parents should be allowed to opt for having children through surrogates. According to people familiar with the details, the committee will also examine whether the definition of close relatives in the bill needs to be modified. The bill restricts surrogacy to close relatives only.

The bill seeks to ban commercial surrogacy and allow only altruistic surrogacy, where a surrogate mother is a close married relative who has had a child of her own.(Getty Images/File Photo)

Bharatiya Janata Party Parliament member Bhupinder Yadav-led Rajya Sabha select committee will travel to Gujarat, Hyderabad and Mumbai between January 18 and 21 for consultations with surrogate mothers, medical practitioners and couples seeking children through surrogates, the people said.

The committee is expected to take a call on the option of permitting a single parent to have children through a surrogate. The permission will bring it in consonance with the adoption law that allows a single parent to adopt.

A relook at the provision that restricts surrogacy to close relatives is also on the cards, the people said. Since the bill does not define who a close relative is, there has been a demand from both medical practitioners as well couples seeking surrogacy to elaborate on who can be a surrogate in a family.

Some experts have pointed out that ambiguity in the definition can lead to domestic violence in families.

“The law says relative, but men cannot be surrogates, which leaves only women in the age group of 25-35 to be eligible. But there may not be any one in the family who fits the criteria. Which is why we have recommended decent compensation for surrogates who are not relatives,” said Dr Shivani Sachdev, a Delhi-based in vitro fertilisation expert.

In November, the bill was referred to the select committee for further scrutiny after Union health minister Harsh Vardhan moved a resolution in Parliament’s upper house when several members sought amendments to its certain provisions. They sought clarity on the term “near relative” to clearly mention who within a family can be a surrogate, and removal of the upper limit of five years of marriage for couples to opt for surrogacy.

The bill seeks to ban commercial surrogacy and allow only altruistic surrogacy, where a surrogate mother is a close married relative who has had a child of her own.

(With inputs from Bhadra Sinha)