Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: an Analysis of the debates on the Draft Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016

Abstract

In recent years India has witnessed a boom in transnational commercial surrogacy that promised an antidote for the apparently growing rates of infertility. The Union Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Narendra Damodar Modi, on the 24th of August 2016, introduced and seconded the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. The Bill is intended to regulate the ever prospering transnational commercial surrogacy industry by - amongst other things- excluding single parents, cohabiting partners, homosexuals, overseas citizens of India and foreign nationals from commissioning surrogacy services. The main objective of this research project was to investigate the ongoing debates about the ban on commercial surrogacy in one of the popular destinations of gestational surrogacy today; India. An interrogation of these debates reveals how they relate to key scholarly debates around the politics of reproduction, gendered bodies, sexuality, Hindu nationalism and shows the way in which legislation can be used as a state tool to reproduce patriarchy, and police sexuality. The research questions the government’s impetus in sanctioning a Bill that it claims will supposedly put an end to exploitation of surrogate mothers through a preferred option of so-called “altruistic surrogacy” over commercial surrogacy. The report suggests that with so-called “altruistic surrogacy”, the government is imposing on women that they should be reproductive gift givers and therefore should not claim or expect any payment for loss of livelihood and labour of gestation experienced in surrogacy. Facing an unregulated surrogacy industry, the Indian government has chosen a regulatory mechanism that allows the state to present itself as ‘saving’ vulnerable women.