Jon, a regular visitor to this blog and perhaps the most knowledgeable person on the current state of affairs in India, has provided some very interesting information that I thought should be promoted to the front page:
Andrew,
Thanks for posting this. I hope your readers take this very seriously. The American embassy and consulates in India are making it perfectly clear to US nationals that a medical visa is required to proceed for surrogacy with Indian IVF clinics. There are some who will try to work around this but hopefully they will understand that they may find themselves in a very difficult situation if a child results, and the US embassy/consulates might not be able to help them secure the proper paperwork from the Indian govt to legally exit the country with their children.
Also, there have been some rumors circulating that the Indian government is going to grandfather-in (for lack of a better term) frozen embryos and allow foreigners to proceed, even if they don’t qualify for a medical visa, so long as the embryos were created prior to the December 17 notification date that banned surrogacy for gays/singles/de facto couples. I have reached out to sources who are very connected regarding this and they told me that this is not true. There has been no official approval of this loophole coming from the Indian govt. What has happened is that, as a ray of hope, many clinics have submitted lists of potential clients who have frozen embryos with the hopes of them being allowed to proceed but the ICMR (the AMA of India) has stated that no loopholes have been given. The ICMR is the official body that regulates the ART/IVF sector in India. So, any readers who have been told otherwise by the clinics they are working with should demand that the clinic owners provide official proof of this loophole. I would be very cautious of working with any clinic that can’t validate what they tell you.
We will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available. In the interim however, I strongly encourage anyone either in the midst of a surrogacy arrangement or considering one in India to please heed Jon’s words of caution.
