The Editorial Analysis- Births and Rights

Table of Contents

Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020- Relevance for UPSC Exam

GS Paper 2: Governance, Administration and Challenges- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Recently, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 was passed in the Lok Sabha.

Regulation of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) field: Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 seeks to establish a national registry and registration authority for all clinics and medical professionals in the segment.
Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill has provisions to protect the rights of the donors, the commissioning couple and the children born out of ART.
Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) seeks to grant and withdraw licences for clinics and banks depending on performance factors.
Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill proposes to make it impossible for outlaws to operate within the system and profit from it, while exploiting patients.
The ART Bill also plans to put an end to illegal trafficking in embryos, and mistreatment of the poor coerced by their circumstances into donating eggs or sperm.
Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill has made provisions for single women, apart from a commissioning heterosexual couple.
Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 excludes two categories — LGBTQIA+ and single men from using Assisted Reproductive Technology.
- As citizens, these groups too have the right to exercise reproductive rights.

Parliamentary Standing expert committee recommended to include both categories- LGBTQIA+ and single men from using Assisted Reproductive Technology.
It also recommended that it would not be appropriate to allow live-in couples and same-sex couples to avail the facility of ART’ citing the best interest of the child born through ART.
- It recorded that ‘given the Indian family structure and social milieu and norms, it will not be very easy to accept a child whose parents are together but not legally married.

While the law would do well to be cognisant of the sentiments of the people, its purpose is also to nudge retrograde social norms out of their freeze-frames towards broader acceptance of differences and preferences.
The Surrogacy Bill intrinsically connected with the ART Bill was pending in the Rajya Sabha, and that it would be appropriate that both Bills be considered together before they are passed.