Essay On Surrogacy And Statelessness

Surrogacy And Statelessness: A Human Right Violation

Mr. Rajat Gava

Amity Law School-Delhi

BA.Llb (hons) 5th year

The means of baby-making have expanded precipitously in the last three decades, prompted by scientific advances and transformations in social organization and gender relations. The word Surrogacy finds its genesis in the word ‘substitute’. Surrogacy can be understood, “as an arrangement in which a woman agrees to a pregnancy, achieved through assisted reproductive technology, in which neither of the gametes belong to her or her husband, with the intention of carrying it to term and handing over the child to the person or persons for whom she is acting as a surrogate; and a ‘surrogate mother’ is a woman who agrees to have an embryo generated from the sperm of a man who is not her husband, and the oocyte for another woman implanted in her to carry the pregnancy to full term and deliver the child to its biological parents(s)”.

In recent decades, a robust international market in commercial reproductive surrogacy has emerged. But, conflicts among legal frameworks of different states have placed the children born at risk of being “marooned stateless and parentless.”

Proponents of surrogacy believe that surrogacy agreements in fact lead to a win-win situation,

A stateless person is a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law. Nationality determines the political status of the individual, especially with reference to allegiance . Nationality arises either by birth or by naturalisation. Universal Declaration of Human rights under Article 15 determines the “right to nationality”. Citizenship is a status of a person recognised under the custom of a law of a state that bestows on that particular person. Citizenship can be by birth or it can be acquired