The Union Cabinet, on Wednesday, cleared the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016, banning commercial surrogacy in India, which many say leads to the exploitation of poor women, who agree to become surrogate mothers for money. The new bill proposes a complete ban on commercial surrogacy in the country, and will allow only legally wedded Indian couples married for at least five years to have children through surrogacy. Commercial surrogacy is banned in most developed countries, including Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, Japan and Thailand among others. The Bill also bars foreigners, homosexual couples, people in live-in relationships and single individuals, making only childless, straight Indian couple married for a minimum of five years eligible for surrogacy.

Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj defended making homosexuals ineligible for surrogacy. “Each country has to make laws that are aligned with our values, as per a legal framework. Homosexual couples are not recognised by law in India.” she said. There are more than 50 million infertile couples in the world, and some of them head to India and Thailand to rent wombs. It turned the two countries into the world’s biggest hubs for commercial surrogacy over the past decade. The Bill approved on Wednesday will apply to the whole of India, except Jammu and Kashmir. Before being passed by the Cabinet, a Group of Ministers (GoM) had recently cleared the Bill. Taking a jibe at celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, who had children by way of surrogacy, Ms Swaraj said that, “rich people outsource pregnancies to poorer women because their wives cannot go through labour pain. We have put a complete stop to celebrities who are commissioning surrogate children like a hobby, despite having biological ones.”