Surrogacy and Reproductive Autonomy: Legal Challenges of Gamete Preservation and Marital Breakdown in India

Assisted reproductive technologies have changed how people make reproductive decisions and have prompted difficult legal and bioethical questions about autonomy, consent and the supervision of medical practice. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 and the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 are India’s careful, control-oriented answer to the clinical and ethical problems that surrogacy and gamete storage create. This paper treats reproductive autonomy as a facet of the liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India and concentrates on surrogacy, the freezing of eggs and sperm, and reproductive decisions made after separation or divorce. It examines the legal standing of stored gametes, the questions of consent, ownership and withdrawal that follow, and the statutes’ silence on choices made after a marriage ends. It also observes that the Surrogacy Act, although open to a widowed or divorced “intending woman”, does not say how gametes preserved during a marriage may be used once it has ended. The paper asks whether current medical law protects women’s reproductive autonomy while giving due weight to ethical concerns and the welfare of the child. Using doctrinal analysis, constitutional case law and selected comparative material, it finds significant gaps in the regulation of assisted reproduction. It argues for a rights-based, gender-sensitive framework built on continuing informed consent, ethical governance and reproductive choice that does not depend on the survival of a marriage.