Egg or Sperm Donor has no Legal Right on Child: Bombay HC

The Bombay High Court in a recent judgement ordered that a donor of eggs or sperm does not have legal entitlement as the biological parent over the child.  

Details About the Case

• Judgment: The Bench was hearing the plea challenging a Trial Court order that refused to give the petitioner visitation rights and access to the twin daughters born through surrogacy. 
  • The judgment noted that the lower Court Order denying visitation rights to the petitioner was without proper application of mind. 
  • The Bench granted visitation rights and access to the twin daughters to the petitioner.   
• The Judgement referred to the National Guidelines for Accreditation, Supervision, and Regulation of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) clinics in India, enacted in 2005 in its order.
• Argument: The woman (petitioner’s sister) argued that she had a legitimate right over the twins as their biological parent.
  • The women volunteered to donate her oocyte (eggs) for her sister and brother-in-law who couldn’t conceive naturally and said the sister

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Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs)

• ART technologies include all fertility treatments in which either eggs or embryos are handled. 
• Procedure: The ART procedures involve surgically removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries, combining them with sperm in the laboratory, and returning them to the woman’s body or donating them to another woman through surrogacy.
• Exclusion: ART technologies does not include treatments where only sperms are handled i.e., intrauterine or artificial insemination or procedures in which a woman takes medicine only to stimulate egg production without the intention of having eggs retrieved. 
• The First ART Treatment: The first successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment was carried out on humans in 1978 in England
  • ART in India: India’s first IVF baby, Kanupriya alias Durga, was born in Calcutta on October 3, 1978, is also the world’s second IVF baby born only two months after the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown.
• Use: In Vitro Fertilisation is employed for infertility related conditions like,
  • Infertility: male factor infertility, diminished ovarian reserve, ovarian failure (with donor eggs), ovulatory dysfunction, and unexplained infertility, tubal factor infertility, uterine factor infertility etc
  • IVF can be used in patients desiring preimplantation genetic testing before conception (such as those known to be carriers of certain genetic disorders), fertility preservation, gonadotoxic therapy, or freezing of eggs or embryos.