Surrogate Mother

Surrogacy has become new buzz in Nepal with all the private agents being illegally involved in providing secret surrogacy service.   The shared border with India and feasible access inside country makes surrogacy an easy job for foreigners visiting Nepal. However, many couple find difficulty to go through legal process or afford cost in developed countries as a result they peruse cheaper options in less-regulated countries like Nepal, Thailand and India. 

 

 There exist two types of surrogacy:  While going through ‘traditional surrogacy’, the hired women acts as both the egg donor and actual surrogate for the embryo, and she is impregnated with a medical procedure termed as ‘intrauterine insemination’. In this operation, the doctor will implant biological father’s sperm into the surrogate's uterus so that fertilization takes place biologically. And with this mechanism the baby has a genetic link to the surrogate mother. Likewise, with gestational surrogacy, an egg is fertilised and transferred to the surrogate’s uterus using IVF. In this case, the surrogate women have no biological link, and both intended parents can be registered on the birth certificate. 

 Dramatic rise of Westerner couple reaping benefit from eastern surrogate has added oriental dimension to the moral and legal debate. Mostly surrogate women come from deprived families who take up the assignment for financial benefit. Existing as illegal and irreligious practice in Nepal, surrogate Nepalese are under pressure to remain silent despite extreme exploitation and injustice to them. 

   The current debate regarding surrogacy tends to ignore the possibilities for systematic arrangement and has instead turned the issue into a social concern. Ultimately this confusion bottom down to debate, whether law believe that couples  who are otherwise impotent to conceive child should be prevented  from alternative privilege  to build their family? 

Undoubtedly it’s believed that the only way to defend “vulnerable” people is by lawfully forbidding conduct under which they are likely to get exploited.  But experience has shown that legal prohibitions often fail to impede activities related to human necessities, especially when they can be systematically incorporated within legislation. For example, prostitution, despite being illegal in Nepal it’s thriving all over the country and victims inside prostitution business are always deprived of constitutional justice.  Amid, the question we should be discussing as modern community and within each society is how the government should adapt this evolving trend of surrogacy in legal manner vis-à-vis protects all parties involved. Such legal motion would safeguard the health of both the surrogate mother and the child. It would also facilitate the resolution of disputes, in case, if the hirer couple don’t accept the child or refuse promised amount to the surrogate and also ensure reproductive right of surrogate women. 

 Today’s metro life demand surrogacy. And I think it should be widely approved and sanctioned to be ventured openly, by professional health workers, in licensed and authorized premises so that each nation would develop a legal framework to fulfil the complex interests of involved parties without violating justice. 

-A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2017 of The Himalayan Times >>>(https://thehimalayantimes.com/opinion/topics-surrogate-mothers/)