Foreigners can`t rent womb in India: Govt to tell SC

New Delhi: The Centre will on Wednesday apprise the Supreme Court of banning commercial surrogacy in India.

The government will also inform the apex court that it won’t permit couples from foreign countries to have a child through surrogate mothers in India, says a report in The Times of India.

The Narendra Modi government held a high-level meeting and instructed solicitor general Ranjit Kumar to inform the SC that India will not be allowed to be turned into the surrogacy capital of the world.

Surrogacy will, however, still be available as an option to Indians to have a child, says the government. "The government of India does not support commercial surrogacy in any form," official sources told the daily.

The Supreme Court had earlier said that commercial surrogacy should not be allowed but was still going on unabated as 'business' in the country without any legal sanctity.

A bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and NV Ramana had expressed concern that various issues related to commercial surrogacy​ are not covered under the law but the practice was still continuing.

"Commercial surrogacy should not be allowed but it is going on in the country. You are allowing trading of human embryo. It is becoming a business and has evolved into surrogacy tourism," the bench, which refused to stay the 2013 notification, said.

The apex court had asked the government to bring commercial surrogacy within the ambit of law.

It had asked the government to clarify whether a woman who donates her egg in commercial surrogacy can be said to be the only mother or both surrogate and genetic mother can be said to be mothers of the child.

The bench had also asked the Centre whether commercial surrogacy amounts to economic and psychological exploitation of the surrogate mother and whether the practice is inconsistent with dignity of womanhood.