Report No. 228

Need for Legislation to Regulate Assisted Reproductive Technology Clinics as well as Rights and Obligations of Parties to a Surrogacy

I. Introduction

1.1 The world's second and India's first IVF (in vitro fertilization) baby, Kanupriya alias Durga was born in Kolkata on October 3, 1978 about two 8months after the world's first IVF boy, Louise Joy Brown born in Great Britain on July 25, 1978. Since then the field of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has developed rapidly.

1.2 The growth in the ART methods is recognition of the fact that infertility as a medical condition is a huge impediment in the overall wellbeing of couples and cannot be overlooked especially in a patriarchal society like India. A woman is respected as a wife only if she is mother of a child, so that her husband's masculinity and sexual potency is proved and the lineage continues. Some authors put it as follows:

The parents construct the child biologically, while the child constructs the parents socially. The problem however arises when the parents are unable to construct the child through the conventional biological means. Infertility is seen as a major problem as kinship and family ties are dependent on progeny. Herein surrogacy comes as a supreme saviour.