Surrogacy or Adoption: What should a married couple prefer?
The surrogacy bill is getting ridiculed for being too harsh on the rights of homosexuals, singles, unmarried couples, foreigners, and on laying rules for the surrogate who has to be a close family. While these may seem a bit too cold and cruel, it is worth noting that the bill is more likely to encourage adoption instead of surrogacy that was soon becoming a trade.
Married couples who are infertile could adopt and give a good life to a poor child who could get the best of care than they would ever at an orphanage. But all thanks to the new trend, people who can afford it, opt for surrogacy. Even those that could conceive naturally are having children through surrogacy.
Adoption1. Having a child: It is understandable that people who cannot conceive naturally opt for assisted pregnancy procedures like IVF and surrogacy. This is called altruistic surrogacy. But are surrogacy even needed in a country where there are so many orphanages where children are in need of love and care? Definitely not. Earlier, when there was nothing in the form of artificially induced pregnancy, people did adopt. They still can if they have half the heart to.
2. Altruistic reason: People who are desperate to have a child and term their reason as altruistic surrogacy often forget that it would be more humane to rather adopt a baby and shower all their parental love on the orphan who would get a home, a family that they have been deprived of. Poverty is not showing any signs of decreasing and neither are people any more concerned about it.
3. Don’t get inspired by celebrities: Celebrities and rich people who have children already opt for surrogacy for the next child rather than having them the natural way. Just because they can afford, it shouldn’t make them forget all ethics and shower money on artificial methods. These are the people who can adopt children who are under harsh conditions of life and give them a future worth being proud of.
4. Can control child labor: Child labor, despite being banned, is prevalent all over the nation. When children should be getting education and learning about clouds and rainbows, they are made to face the harsh realities of survival and livelihood under extreme poverty conditions. If people who could afford surrogacy could only come forth and adopt these children, in the next twenty years India will show a different picture.
5. Rise in surrogacy diminished adoption: In the last 10 years, when surrogacy showed greater rise in all parts of the country, even to the extent that foreigners came to India to hire a womb, adoption rate showed extreme decrease. Lesser people now look forward to adopting a child when they can’t have one of their own naturally.
Surrogacy1. Your own genes: The reason why it is said that there is nothing like parental love is the bond parents share with the child. There is an instant feeling of gratification when you get to hold a mini version of yourself. The little bundle of joy has your genes running through and that makes you proud of being able to bring the little life into this world. Adoption does have its own joy if parents are actually ready for it, but it is quite different from having one of your own.
2. Adoption is not easy too: Adoption has been made into a complicated process too. It is not easier to head into an orphanage, provide the necessary documents and come out with a child. The legal and social formalities that a couple has to fulfill take a lot of time and patience. Furthermore, you can be denied the right to adopt a child on various grounds if you happen to have a history of addiction in the past.
3. It is helping the poor too: A woman can be a surrogate if she has previously given birth to one of her own child. They are paid hugely. They usually use this money to give a good life to their children and family. This way the poor children of the surrogate mother is benefiting from the procedure. If nasty goings-on are taken care of in the process, surrogacy is a good income source for these women.
4. If they can have it, why deny them? There is no harm coming from people who opt for surrogacy even under normal circumstances. If they don’t want to adopt and want the child to have their gene, there should be no compelling them to do otherwise. The trade that has become of surrogacy could still be taken care of without imposing so many restrictions.
Surrogacy might be responsible for the lowering number of adoption in India but that said, there is no security that imposing limits on surrogacy will encourage them to opt for adoption. There are other procedures of artificial and assisted pregnancy like IVF which can be carried out if the mother is healthy enough. People who want to adopt still do, due to humane reasons or the fact that adoption is still cheaper than surrogacy.
