Update: Single Parents, Frozen Embryos and Surrogacy

Both the doctors were fortunate to spend some quality time with Dr. R.S.Sharma (Deputy Director General- ICMR). It was extremely kind of Dr. R.S.Sharma to give half hour of his precious time and discuss the present difficulties of surrogacy in India with them and way forward.

This blog post is to give further update on the above topics.

1) Single Parents : It is believed that the Indian Government (ICMR/MHA and other relevant authorities) are working on editing the draft to allow single parents to undergo surrogacy in India. In India gay marriages are illegal and thus gay couples who are married will not be able to go ahead with surrogacy In India.

We are not yet sure how they will testify gay couples marital status. For e.g. will it be a marriage certificate or the status in passport or some other documents.

This indicates that there is a high probability that single men will be allowed to undergo surrogacy in India sooner or later. On the lighter front, probably gay couples who are planning to getting married should postpone their plans..... :) 

 

2) Frozen Embryos: As per the discussion, they are also working on regulations to allow couples / single parents / Gay couples to ship their frozen embryos outside India for embryo transfers. There are certain permissions to be taken before shipping the embryos but is a feasible option.

We suggest single men who are planning to ship their embryos to Thailand or any other country should probably wait till the above point is addressed. We believe it should take approximately 2 to 3 months before you get approval to ship the embryo and do the embryo transfer in other country, which is arguably the same time before we could get the confirmation that single parent can do surrogacy in India.

We want our readers to note that the above discussed points are yet to be finalised. 

 

The positive news is that all the authorities especially ICMR seems to be positive for surrogacy. Having said that, this doesn’t mean SurrogacyIndia will start embryo transfers for single parents yet now but we are confident it will be done sooner than later. 

We request all our readers to keep faith in us. We shall keep you updated as and when we get information.