Laws relating to vulnerable sections
Source: The Economic Times
Context: Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020, that was passed in the Lok Sabha.
About the ART Regulation Bill, 2020
Definition of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART): all techniques that seek to obtain a pregnancy by handling the sperm (immature egg cell) outside the human body and transferring the gamete or the embryo into the reproductive system of a woman.
ART services would be allowed to be provided through:
(i) ART clinics, which offer ART related treatments and procedures, and
(ii) ART banks, which store and supply gametes.
Regulation of ART clinics and banks:
National Registry of Banks and Clinics: Every ART clinic & bank must be registered under it. It will act as a central database with details of all ART clinics and banks in the country. State governments will appoint registration authorities for facilitating the registration process.
Condition for registration: Clinics and banks will be registered only if they adhere to certain standards ( specialised manpower, physical infrastructure & diagnostic facilities).
Conditions for gamete donation and supply:
Registration necessary: Screening of gamete donors, collection and storage of semen, and provision of oocyte donors can only be done by a registered ART bank.
Age of donor: A bank can obtain semen from males between 21 and 55 years of age, and oocytes from females between 23 and 35 years of age.
Reproductive/marital status: An oocyte donor should be an ever-married woman having at least one alive child of her own (minimum three years of age).
The woman can donate oocytes only once in her life and not more than seven oocytes can be retrieved from her.
A bank cannot supply the gamete of a single donor to more than one commissioning couple (couple seeking services).
Rights of a child born through ART: A child born through ART will be deemed to be a biological child of the commissioning couple and will be entitled to the rights and privileges available to a natural child of the commissioning couple. A donor will not have any parental rights over the child.
Regulation Boards: The National and State Boards for Surrogacy constituted under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2019 will act as the National and State Board respectively for the regulation of ART services.
Offenses and penalties would be imposed in the following cases:
Abandoning, or exploiting children born through ART,
Selling, purchasing, trading, or importing human embryos or gametes,
Using intermediates to obtain donors,
Exploiting commissioning couple, woman, or the gamete donor in any form, and Transferring the human embryo into a male or an animal.
Importance of the bill:
Need for regulation of fertility treatments: The time has indeed come for such a Bill; for government intervention to regulate the field of fertility treatments, and by seeking to establish a national registry and registration authority for all clinics and medical professionals in the segment, it will fill a vacuum.
Protecting the rights of donors and children: It has provisions to protect the rights of the donors, the commissioning couple, and the children born out of ART, to grant and withdraw licenses for clinics and banks depending on performance factors.
Only altruistic donations - no profit is possible: It proposes to make it impossible for outlaws to operate within the system and profit from it while exploiting patients.
End to illegal trafficking: It also plans to put an end to illegal trafficking in embryos, and mistreatment of the poor coerced by their circumstances into donating eggs or sperm.
Problems with the Bill:
Exclusivist at the very outset: It excludes two categories of citizens — LGBTQIA+ and single men from the benefits and rights that the law seeks to confer upon the people of the country.
Inequality in the Matter of reproductive rights: As citizens, these groups too have the right to exercise reproductive rights. The omission is particularly baffling considering that the legislation has made provisions for single women too, apart from a commissioning heterosexual couple.
Retrograde social norms followed
Reasons are given behind the exclusion - View of the Parliamentary standing committee:
Moral view: ‘It would not be appropriate to allow live-in couples and same-sex couples to avail the facility of ART’ citing the best interest of the child born through ART.
Argument from family structure: It also recorded that ‘given [the] Indian family structure and social milieu and norms, it will not be very easy to accept a child whose parents are together but not legally married.
Drawing a parallel with the surrogacy bill: Legislators have also pointed out that the Surrogacy Bill intrinsically connected with the ART Bill was pending in the Rajya Sabha, and that it would only be appropriate that both Bills be considered together before they are passed.
Way forward:
The purpose of legislation should also be to nudge retrograde social norms out of their freeze-frames towards broader acceptance of differences and preferences. This has not happened.
