Surrogacy bill 2016- an analysis of its legal validity

Author: 
Sindhuza and Lalith Kumar.J

Motherhood is the prime phase of a Female's life. Majority of the Females across the World is fortune enough to rejoice such Motherhood, but some are not. Such Woman were made to feel disgrace about themselves by the Society for not accomplishing her purpose of being a Female. For those Women who are not able to conceive naturally, the method of Surrogacy is the best remedy as by this method, one could get a Child of their own blood. Within 20 years of its invention the Surrogacy was welcomed by majority of the woman all over the World including India. But there were no legislated laws for Surrogacy in India for many years, which paved way for the Illegal nature of that method, I.e. Commercialization of Surrogacy. The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) provided some guidelines for the Surrogacy in 2005, but they were not as effective as a legislated law.
The Indian Parliament after witnessing the several issues arising of Surrogacy, passed a Bill for Surrogacy in 2005 for the first time and consequently passed the Bills for a number of years, but none were enacted as an Act. Finally, the Parliament passed a recent Bill for Surrogacy in 2016. But this Bill of 2016 was outraged by many people of India for its feature of emphasizing restrictions to Foreigners, Homosexuals and Unmarried Single Individuals from opting Surrogacy. The other feature of the Bill to be largely debated is that the provision of only a close relative of the Intending Parent could act as a Surrogate Mother.
Thus this paper has done a doctrinal research on the examining the Nature and concept of Surrogacy, analyzing the key issues of the Bill, evaluating its consequences and suggesting some remedies.

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DOI: 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2017.6534.0959
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