SRK to Tusshar Kapoor: How IVF clinics put motherhood on sale

The public discourse surrounding Tusshar Kapoor opting for fatherhood through assisted reproduction has focused solely on the right of choice for a single parent to use a commercial surrogacy to become a father.

It has been hailed as a bold step and arrival of so-called new-age fatherhood.

I proudly announce the arrival of my son, a baby boy, born last week through IVF and surrogacy.… https://t.co/LW7rZ0dfOz

— Tusshar (@TusshKapoor) June 27, 2016

Absence of any regulation on paid surrogacy makes this whole affair appear clean, legal and acceptable.

Yet it would be wrong to ignore serious moral and legal issues, besides those relating to rights of surrogate mothers and surrogate kids, connected with this episode.

In previous cases of surrogacy, Bollywood couples - Aamir Khan-Kiran Rao and Shah Rukh-Gauri Khan - used the method differently.

Despite being presumably healthy for reproduction at the time of surrogacy, they hired surrogates solely for gestation of their biological kids.

In "gestational surrogacy", genetic mother provides the egg which is fertilised with sperm of genetic father but another woman (surrogate mother) carries the foetus and gives birth to the child.

Tusshar Kapoor is single so he opted for paid surrogate who provided her own egg, which was fertilised by artificial insemination and she carried the foetus giving birth to his child.

In such cases, the child shares make-up of the commissioning father (Kapoor, in the present case) and surrogate mother who is also genetic or biological mother.

In the absence of any legal framework on assisted reproduction, surrogacy business hinges on money and commercial contracts.

Commissioning parents (including same-sex couples) or single parents (like Kapoor) sign a contract with the surrogate mother (who could also be a donor) about the custody of a child as soon as he or she is born.

Also read - Legalising surrogacy is much like legalising paid sex

These contracts are brokered by IVF clinics and are usually enforceable under the Indian Contracts Act of 1872.

The paperwork is fine except that the subject matter of these contracts is not a house or property but a human womb and motherhood.

Such deals reduce motherhood to a commodity.

Poor, gullible women are forced into surrogacy for money. No wonder, Indians with deep pockets and foreign "medical tourists" are flocking to cheap clinics in Anand, Gujarat and elsewhere to sign womb-hiring contracts.

Like any other type of deals, surrogacy contracts too are prone to breach and land in courts.

Marital discord between commissioning husband and wife can leave surrogate in lurch or refusal of commissioning parents to take home a child born with deformities adds to the woes of surrogate mothers.

A surrogate mother - whether gestational or biological - undergoes immense physical, emotional and psychological trauma through pregnancy and child birth.

Post-child birth, bond between the mother and the child are severed instantly as per contractual terms.

Also read - Does India treat a newborn as commodity?

Newborns are denied their right to mother's milk. Doctors consider breast feeding necessary for development of a newborn in the first six months of his or her life.

Surrogate kids are denied this basic right. Well, the IVF bazaar can take care of this problem too through "human milk banks" where mother's milk can be sold and bought like a commodity.

Law or no law, the commoditisation of motherhood is complete.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)