Stricter ‘womb rent’ laws needed
(sz) It’s not just heterosexual couples who are crossing borders to visit desi infertility clinics any more, as same sex couples too are dropping the occasional request.
An Israeli gay couple who recently fathered twins at a city hospital are probably among the first beneficiaries of the city’s surrogate programme.
In a country where same sex couples are often shunned, their yearning to parent kids finds support in a list of guidelines drawn up by the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) which recommends that “single unmarried women or a lesbian couple or a gay couple” should be allowed to use artificial reproductive techniques (ARTs) to have children.
The progressive guidelines are difficult to implement for foreigners, say doctors, who point out that ART for medical tourists remains a grey territory under law.
It then remains the doctor’s prerogative to take up such cases. Israeli couple Richard and Peter (name changed), who chanced upon a website of a desi infertility specialist, got help at a Bandra clinic. Peter’s sperm was fused with a donor’s eggs and implanted in a surrogate mother who delivered the twins at Hiranandani Hospital on September 17. more…
From: »The Times Of India«