Book on Medico Legal Issues "Surrogacy" Releases

By 121 News

Chandigarh 29th May:- The book, Surrogacy:Medico Legal Issues, written by Advocate Gehna Vaishnavi and Dr Navneet Takkar was released by Hon'ble Justice Rajiv Narain Raina in PGI today.  Hon'ble Justice congratulated the authors and remarked that surrogacy is a new challenge faced by infertile couples and while looking at it from legal point of view it is equally important to understand that surrogacy involves real people and their emotions. Most important of all is the child who must be assured safety, citizenship and identity. Litigation's in this area are likely to grow exponentially in near future. The need for enacting laws is in dire need and draft Assisted Reproduction Technology (Regulations) bills, 2008, 2010 and 2013 are on the drawing boards of stakeholders and legislature. The regimen of law controlling medico-legal stand points in surrogacy has to be put in place to prevent unregulated growth of the so called "commercial surrogacy.

Prof Yogesh Chawla, director PGIMER emphasized the need of check and balances, especially with economic growth, booming medical tourism due to excellent medical expertise and state of the art medical facilities.  Surrogacy which may be the only hope for some childless couple should not be allowed to become a commercial commodity, there is need to stop mushrooming of the so called baby farming or baby factories.  

Advocate Gehna Vaishnavi dwelled on the reasons behind writing this book. As the book has been written by both a lawyer and a doctor it has tried to address both human and legal aspects of surrogacy. Surrogacy is a sort of contract where in surrogate mother for a fee conceives a child through artificial insemination with the sperm of natural father. She is supposed to have no parental rights after the birth of the child. In addition to legal issues it involves the emotions of a woman and the plight of the childless couple. The book includes foreign judgements and Indian judicial precedents which have set bench mark as to how to deal with this issue.