Surrogacy is an arrangement by
which infertile couples enter into
a contract with another woman who carries their baby in her womb for a period of nine months. The process of surrogacy, when initially started, involved a married couple who could not have their own baby, either due to a spouse’s being infertile, or the woman having to suffer from the birth of the child. Surrogacy in the olden days, thus, meant a married man having sexual intercourse with the surrogate, in order to have their own baby. However, due to the advancement in the field of medical science, there are now a lot of ways for the surrogate to help the couple, other than having sexual intercourse. Surrogacy can be broadly categorized as: (i) Gestational surrogacy, wherein the pregnancy results from the creation of an embryo by IVF using the intended father’s sperm and a donor’s egg where the donor is not the surrogate in a manner so that the resulting child is genetically unrelated to the surrogate. (ii) Traditional surrogacy, wherein the pregnancy results from using either surrogate’s eggs or the sperm of a donor or both together, which are then fertilized in the womb of the surrogate. This would thus result in the baby being genetically unrelated either to one of them or to both parents.
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