Egg donation won’t give donor legal right to become child’s parent: High Court

Bombay High Court rules that egg or sperm donation does not grant legal parental rights, granting visitation rights to petitioner.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday (August 13, 2024) held that merely donating eggs or sperm does not give legal entitlement to the donor to claim that she is the biological parent of the child.  

Pronouncing the verdict that was reserved on August 2, 2024, single Bench judge, Justice Milind Jadhav dismissed an argument of a woman (petitioner’s sister), who had volunteered to donate her oocyte (eggs) for her sister and brother-in-law who couldn’t conceive naturally and said the sister had no legitimate right to claim that she was the biological parent of the twins.

The Bench was hearing a plea filed by a woman (petitioner) who challenged a trial Court order that refused to give her visitation rights and access to her twin daughters born through surrogacy.  

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Appearing for the petitioner, Advocate Ganesh Gole argued that since the twin girls are of growing age, the petitioner needs to be given visitation rights. “When the petitioner failed to conceive naturally due to medical issues of both parties as averred in the petition, the couple consulted a gynaecologist in Bengaluru who diagnosed that eggs of the petitioner were non-viable. The gynaecologist advised the couple to go for altruistic surrogacy through an egg donor and that is when the petitioner approached her younger sister who was already married and had a daughter. The sister agreed to be the egg donor and on November 30, 2018, the procedure was carried out at an infertility centre in Bengaluru where parties entered into a Surrogacy Agreement,” Mr. Gole said.  

The In vitro fertilization [IVF] treatment happened in December 2018, and the petitioner’s sister donated her eggs in January 2019 and the surrogacy procedure commenced thereafter with the surrogate mother.  

Unfortunately, the petitioner’s sister lost her daughter and husband in a road accident on April 21, 2019. The accident left her with disability. On August 25, 2019, twin daughters were born through the surrogate mother in Bengaluru. From then till March 2021, the sister resided with the couple and their twin daughters at Navi Mumbai since she was depressed.