Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021
About
- The Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) (Regulation) Act, 2021 was passed by the Parliament in 2021 to regulate and supervise ART clinics and banks in India to ensure ethical practices, prevent misuse, and safeguard the rights of patients, donors, and children born through these technologies.
Assisted Reproductive Technologies:
- ART refers to a range of fertility treatments aimed at aiding reproduction for couples suffering from infertility or to persons who may wish to have a child through artificial methods.
- These arrangements include in-vitro fertilisation (fertilising an egg in the lab), gamete donation (sperm or egg), and gestational surrogacy (where the child is not biologically related to the surrogate mother).
Key Features of the Act
Provision of ART services:
- The Act defines ART to include all techniques that seek to obtain a pregnancy by handling the sperm or the oocyte (immature egg cell) outside the human body and transferring the gamete or the embryo into the reproductive system of a woman.
- These include gamete donation, in vitro fertilization, and gestational surrogacy.
- ART services will be provided through:
- ART clinics, which offer ART related treatments and procedures, and
- ART banks, which collect, screen and store gametes.
Registration of ART clinics and banks:
- Every ART clinic and bank must be registered under the National Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Registry.
- A National Registry will be established under the Act, which will act as a central database with details of all ART clinics and banks in the country.
- Clinics and banks will be registered only if they adhere to certain standards. The registration will be valid for five years and may be renewed.
Boards:
- The Act provides that the National and State Boards constituted under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 will also act as the National and State Boards for the regulation of ART services.
- The National Board will review and monitor the Act’s implementation and formulate a code of conduct and standards for ART clinics and banks.
Eligibility criteria for commissioning parties:
- ART services may be commissioned by married couples or women where:
- the woman is between 21 and 50 years of age, and
- the man is between 21 and 55 years.
- Married couples must also be infertile.
Eligibility criteria for donors:
- A bank may obtain semen from males between 21 and 55 years of age, and eggs from females between 23 and 35 years of age.
- The woman may donate eggs only once in her life and not more than seven eggs may be retrieved from her.
Conditions for offering services:
- ART procedures must be conducted only with the written consent of the commissioning parties and the donor.
- The commissioning party will be required to provide insurance coverage in favour of the egg donor (for any loss, damage, or death).
Rights of a child born through ART:
- A child born through ART will be deemed to be a biological child of the commissioning couple and will be entitled to the rights and privileges available to a natural child of the commissioning couple.
- A donor will not have any parental rights over the child.
Offences and penalties:
- The penalty for offences under the Act is fine between five and ten lakh rupees for the first contravention. For subsequent contraventions, these offences will be punishable with imprisonment between three and ten years.