It’s about time. Indian women have died renting their uteruses or donating eggs for well-off foreigners. Some babies born thereby were not wanted and landed in orphanages. Now, according the invaluable Bioedge, the government is finally imposing some long-needed regulatory restrictions on India’s rent-a-womb industry. From the report:
Only heterosexual couples who have been married for more than two years will be able to hire surrogate mothers. Surrogacy must be legal in their home country and they must have a medical visa, not a tourist visa. They have to produce proof from their own embassy that the child will be accepted as their biological child when they return. Only authorised IVF clinics will be able to employ surrogates for foreigners.
I think India should go farther and ban surrogacy for non citizens in the way the Philippines outlawed live organ donations for non citizens due to the organ buying crisis there. Poor women should not be treated as mere natural resources for the exploitation of those who can’t–or don’t want to–have children in the traditional way. Biological colonialism should be thwarted on all fronts.