Kenya Members of Parliament are set to vote on a new bill that seeks to regulate surrogacy with a proposal that allows potential surrogates to be used only three times in their lifetime.

 

According to the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, 2022, women wanting to be surrogates will be required to wait for two years between each birth to be eligible for another agreement.

 

The bill sponsored by Suba North Member of Parliament Millie Odhiambo will be debated in the committee of the whole house and seeks to impede financial exploitation of women who would wish to be surrogates.

 

Surrogacy is a process in which a woman carries and delivers a child for a couple or individual and the Bill if approved by MPs will regulate it alongside other aspects of assisted reproductive technology.

 

The bill provides that men wishing to donate their sperms or women seeking to donate their embryos to aid infertile couples bear children cannot do so more than ten times.

 

“A person shall not perform a treatment procedure using gametes or an embryo produced by a donor if such procedure may result in more than ten children who are genetic siblings,” read the bill.

 

In the proposals, medical practitioners undertaking the assisted reproductive technology shall not keep or use an embryo other than a human embryo, place a human embryo in any animal or transfer an embryo in a woman other than a human embryo.

 

Where the sperm of a man, or any embryo the creation of which was brought about with the sperm of the man was used post humously, the proposal stated that he shall not be treated as the father of the child.