​ Surrogacy Bill draft from stone age: Congress

NEW DELHI: The Congress has come out with a detailed critique of the Centre’s proposed Surrogacy Bill, calling it reflection of a “stone-age” thinking, antiliberal and out of touch with the modern social milieu. Maintaining that the Union Cabinet-cleared Bill is a “muchnarrower” version of what UPA regime had proposed and favouring a re-think on the Bill, excluding widows, live-in partners and homosexuals and imposing a “blanket ban” on foreigners”, the main Opposition party called for wider consultations for consensus-building before the Bill is tabled in Parliament. “The new Surrogacy Bill seems to be something resembling a draft from the stone-age.

It appears to follow a most anti-liberal approach, not at all in line with the social milieu that we live in and it is also unscientific. All kinds of value judgements have been injected into it in a very paternalistic manner” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said at the official briefing. “The punishment (for violating the proposed legislation) in this new version is 10 years imprisonment. This shows this government has gone back to the stone ages. They have delegated the drafting of this surrogacy bill perhaps to the surrogate RSS.

This is a surrogate delegation to surrogate agencies,” Singhvi quipped Questioning the rationale of the Bill excluding surrogacy by live-in couples, those with adopted child, those with a single child, homosexuals, NRIs & foreigners, Singhvi said, “The strange reason for excluding OCIs, foreigners etc.. is that divorces are very common in foreign countries. Why are they restricting surrogacy only to married couples? Surrogacy could be desired by widows, livein partners, NRIs etc. If all the categories are banned, then why have surrogacy at all.

This is an anti-liberal law”. Singhvi argued the 2010 Bill the erstwhile UPA regime had proposed was a more nuanced approach with a modern outlook. “The UPA had a far wider canvas in the main 2010 Bill. Our Bill was the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill: This is an important distinctions. We should not only talk about surrogacy. Assisted Reproductive Technologies include IVF, sperm donation and all other kinds of options.

The NDA-proposed Bill is a much narrower bill than the 2010 version of the UPA's” Congress also favoured a rethink on homosexuals’ exclusion. “In our (UPA) version homosexuals were excluded. Times have changed and that also requires a rethink”.