This clipping shows the importance of a surrogacy contract. A Couple who had failed to enter into a proper, legally binding contract with the surrogate mother had to lose the court battle and the rights over the child. The Surrogacy Contract plays a very important role in surrogacy. Please click here to view the video.
The following is the extract from the “Guidelines for Accreditation, Supervision and Regulation of Art Clinics in India, 2005”:
3.10.1 A child born through surrogacy must be adopted by the genetic (biological) parents unless they can establish through genetic (DNA) fingerprinting (of which the records will be maintained in the clinic) that the child is theirs.
3.10.2 Surrogacy by assisted conception should normally be considered only for patients for whom it would be physically or medically impossible/undesirable to carry a baby to term.
3.10.3 Payments to surrogate mothers should cover all genuine expenses associated with the pregnancy. Documentary evidence of the financial arrangement for surrogacy must be available. The ART centre should not be involved in this monetary aspect.
3.10.4 Advertisements regarding surrogacy should not be made by the ART clinic. The responsibility of finding a surrogate mother, through advertisement or otherwise, should rest with the couple, or a semen bank.
3.10.5 A surrogate mother should not be over 45 years of age. Before accepting a woman as a possible surrogate for a particular couple’s child, the ART clinic must ensure (and put on record) that the woman satisfies all the testable criteria to go through a successful full-term pregnancy.
3.10.6 A relative, a known person, as well as a person unknown to the couple may act as a surrogate mother for the couple. In the case of a relative acting as a surrogate, the relative should belong to the same generation as the women desiring the surrogate.
3.10.7 A prospective surrogate mother must be tested for HIV and shown to be seronegative for this virus just before embryo transfer. She must also provide a written certificate that (a) she has not had a drug intravenously administered into her through a shared syringe, (b) she has not undergone blood transfusion; and (c) she and her husband (to the best of her/his knowledge) has had no extramarital relationship in the last six months. (This is to ensure that the person would not come up with symptoms of HIV infection during the period of surrogacy.) The prospective surrogate mother must also declare that she will not use drugs intravenously, and not undergo blood transfusion excepting of blood obtained through a certified blood bank.
3.10.8 No woman may act as a surrogate more than thrice in her lifetime.
The surrogacy market in India is now set to boom than ever. One of the main reasons for this is contrastingly, the fall of the world economy.
Intended Parents from all over the world who have planned to have a child through surrogacy somewhere during this time have been taken by shock with the falling markets. The savings set aside for achieving the dreams of motherhood, is now pressed upon for other needs. This being the case, ambitious Intended Parents look for India as a means for their dreams.
The global markets have crashed and now people are looking for cost effective alternatives than surrogacy in the developed countries. For couple from all over the world, India figures as one of the best choices in terms of reproductive tourism. The United States Laws are most accommodative for commercial surrogacy. The procedure for taking the surrogate child born from India to the United States is apparently simple. This being the position, intended parents from United States traveling to India for surrogacy is surely set to boom.