New Delhi, Oct. 10 – India’s top court said married couples who started a surrogacy program before January 2022 can ignore the new age limits in the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act. The Supreme Court ruled that the law cannot be applied retroactively to those who already made embryos and began freezing or transferring them.
Justices B. V. Nagarathna and K. V. Vishwanathan explained that when couples began their surrogacy plans, they were not subject to the Act’s age rules. The court held that a constitutional right to pursue surrogacy should not be suddenly weakened by a law that takes effect after the fact. “The Act’s restrictions must be reasonable and not unfairly curtail a right that existed before the law was enacted,” the bench said.
Three petitions challenged the rule that bars married couples if the wife is older than 50 or the husband older than 55 at the time of certification. Those petitions came from couples whose surrogacy process had already started when the Act entered force on Jan. 25, 2022. Their embryos were already created, frozen, or ready for transfer.
The court’s decision clarified that the age limits in Section 4(iii)(c)(I) do not apply to those couples. The ruling does not strike down the age restrictions themselves; it simply prevents them from being applied retroactively. As a result, the petitions were allowed, and the couples can now proceed with their surrogacy plans without meeting the age requirement.
This move protects couples who had invested time, money, and emotional effort into surrogacy before the new law. It also underscores the Supreme Court’s commitment to upholding constitutional rights while balancing new regulations.
For those seeking surrogacy services in India, the decision means that if you started your process prior to January 2022, you won’t have to worry about age barriers. The court’s ruling is expected to ease uncertainty for many couples who were caught between the old and new legal frameworks.
Source: aninews
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