India’s “baby factories” face a clampdown after the country’s government unveiled a draft law which would ban commercial surrogacy.
India is regarded as the “surrogacy hub” of the world, with infertile couples paying women there to carry their embryos through to birth.
The Evening Standard has revealed how large numbers of Britons go to India to have children with a surrogate mother.
One father from Ilford told how he and his wife had spent 13 years trying to have a baby, before succeeding through a surrogate mother in Mumbai at a cost of £50,000.
Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said that under the proposed law only local infertile couples, married for at least five years, would be able to seek a surrogate, who must be a close relative.
“Childless couples, who are medically unfit to have children, can take help from a close relative, which is called altruistic surrogacy,” she said.
The law would also ban people who do not hold an Indian passport, Indian single parents and gay people from having children through surrogacy.
It is estimated that there were 2,000 births to surrogate mothers in India last year. British couples and single people pay an average of £25,000 a time, getting around UK rules which make commercial surrogacy illegal.
The unregulated business is centred on surrogacy hospitals and clinics which pay women £2,500-£3,500 for carrying a child.
Critics say poverty drives many women to become surrogates. But fertility expert Archana Dhawan Bajaj said: “While we need regulations to ensure that no women are forced into surrogacy, an outright ban isn’t logical.”
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