Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said the Narendra Modi government will introduce a bill that sets as 50 years the maximum age limit for women who want to use in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) to conceive.
The move comes as heated debate continues in the medical fraternity about the ethics of aged people using IVF to conceive after a 74-year-old woman gave birth to twins via the therapy in Andhra Pradesh earlier this month.
Harsh Vardhan revealed plans to introduce an age limit for women availing of IVF in an interaction with The Print. IVF, once popularly referred to as test-tube babies, includes multiple treatment options such as artificial insemination, IVF and surrogacy.
Harsh Vardhan told The Print the age limit on IVF has been included in the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2019, which the Modi government will introduce in the next session of Parliament. “The bill will be introduced in Parliament after its draft is approved by the Ministry of Law and Justice and the Cabinet,” Harsh Vardhan told The Print.
Harsh Vardhan said the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2019, would be “quite useful” in checking misuse of ART methods and also help curb “exploitation of couples facing infertility”.
The assisted reproduction health sector in India has had little regulation, though the Indian Council of Medical Research had laid out guidelines in 2002 to regulate surrogate pregnancies. The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill was first proposed in 2008, but a final version emerged only in 2017. However, it was not introduced.
The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2017, had set an age limit on women availing of assisted reproduction methods. A draft of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2017, found on the Department of Health Research website notes, “The assisted reproductive technology services shall not be available to a woman below the age of eighteen years and above the age of forty five years.”
