The PD Hinduja Hospital administration and an IVF consultant affiliated with the hospital on Monday submitted affidavits seeking dismissal of plea by a city couple seeking directions to allow them to complete a surrogacy procedure which commenced prior to the publication of Assisted Reproduc-tive Technologies (ART) Act and Surrogacy (Regulation) Act.
The hospital filed a reply to a division bench of Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala and Justice Madhav J Jamdar before which a plea by the couple had been listed for hearing. However, with Justice Jamdar on Tuesday recusing himself from hearing the plea, the lawyers will move an alternate bench which will hear the same in due course.
The couple has sought directions to the hospital to transfer their cryopreserved embryos to a fertility centre in Thane or any other ART clinic in Mumbai, and continue the surrogacy procedure.
The plea said the wife had lost both her children and could no longer give a natural birth due to a medical issue and had, therefore, approached the Hinduja Hospital to undergo a surrogacy procedure which began in October last year. After completion of the fertilisation procedure, the resulting embryos were cryo-preserved in the hospital’s custody.
The ART Act and Surrogacy Act came into force from January this year and the petitioners began requesting the hospital to transfer the embryo to the fertility clinic, the plea said. The hospital initially said that the couple could not transfer the embryos to the surrogate carrier as the new law was passed because of which the hospital, in turn, could not treat the surrogate carrier.
The petitioners said they went ahead with the procedure for surrogacy in the fertility clinic, which sent a letter to Hinduja hospital asking the authorities to transfer the embryos. However, the hospital did not give any response for two weeks and later said that they could not transfer the embryos due to conflicting legal views.
Dr. Suganthi Iyer, deputy director of the private hospital stated in her reply that the petitioners were counselled and explained the complete process of IVF and surrogacy and were informed about the complete procedure, including complete evaluation before starting any treatment.
As per her reply, the couple was further informed that only if good quality endometrium is confirmed will the candidate be considered medically fit for implantation of embryos for surrogacy.
Denying that the surrogacy procedure commenced before both laws came into force, the hospital said all IVF procedures are not surrogacy procedures and the same was explained to petitioners. “(The) IVF procedure conducted on December 24 last year was under the then prevailing ICMR guidelines. However, the potential candidate to be considered for being a surrogate mother was not found to be medically fit for implantation and hence it cannot be said that surrogacy procedure had in any case commenced before the Acts came into force,” the affidavit read.
It added that it was merely following the rules and procedures mentioned in the Acts which has strict penal provisions in case of any default by clinic and/or hospital.