Aastha Sharma | The Hindu | 24 July 2010
Surrogacy regulation may well be one of Hilbert’s unsolvable problems. Only this is not mathematics and there are already many versions of the ‘solution’ in existence. It has been a decade since the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have been trying to regulate the ‘fertility industry’ that is proliferating unchecked all over the country, and yet we do not have comprehensive legislation in our hands. So far, there have been a set of draft guidelines (2002), the finalised guidelines (2005), the draft Bill 2008, the draft Bill 2010 and a Law Commission report (2009) — all with a mix of contradicting, progressive, regressive, rights protecting and profit-protecting clauses. The draft Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Regulation) Bill and Rules 2010, the latest version, has not been made public yet, and only glimpses of some of its clauses can be caught through recent news reports.