Why India’s New Surrogacy Bill Is Bad For Women

Feminist ethicists have been asking for deeper regulations of the surrogacy industry in India. But on August 24, 2016 the Indian government went ahead and moved closer toderegulating the industry when the Union Cabinet cleared the Surrogacy Bill 2016. The new bill bans commercial surrogacy altogether, but leaves the door wide open for altruistic surrogacy where no money shall be exchanged between birthing mother and commissioning parents. This new bill will lead to far deeper exploitation of indigent women who are now expected to labor for free.

This is not to say that the practices of global surrogacy have been egalitarian. In various fora, along with other feminist ethicists, I have argued that surrogacy in India has been based on unfair labor conditions for surrogate mothers. The regulations to date had privileged clients over surrogate mothers; provided no enforceable guidelines on the number of embryos to be transplanted; no guidelines on the number of times a woman could be hormonally hyper-stimulated for the purposes of commercial pregnancy; no choice for the surrogate mother to carry her pregnancy to term...