By Amarachi Favour Chinonyerem
Infertility is a disease that affects many people worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), infertility is ‘a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after twelve months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse’.
According to WHO, it is said to affect one in every six persons of reproductive age worldwide.
Infertility may be caused by various factors which there may not be an explanation for it. This is to say that it may neither or rather most of the time may not be a person’s fault, it just happens. However, despite this, people do want to have their own child and as such opt for Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) such as In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF), surrogacy et cetera to have a child. This ART offers a chance of parenthood to people.
According to a study conducted by G David Adamson and his co-researchers, there has been up to ten million (10,000,000) and up to thirteen million (13,000,000) or more infants have been born from ART in the 40 years since the first ART-conceived infant was born in 1978.
Nigeria being a conservative country have reluctantly welcomed these ideas to help ease the rate of infertility while also clutching firmly towards the perception that women regardless should be able to get pregnant without all these technologies like in the days of our mothers. Most attribute this infertility to a curse for something that the woman might have done. However, irrespective of all these perceptions attached to infertility in Nigeria, most people still employ the use of these technologies but in secret for fear that they would be berated or laughed at. This is to say that many people who employ the use ART, do it in secret, hence, there might not be accurate estimates given for the number of people that do employ these technologies.
One thing is clear and that is the fact that ART is becoming widespread in Nigeria. Therefore, there is a need for a law to regulate ART in Nigeria. As at now, there is no specific law that has been enacted in this regard. All the other laws are just general laws which provides generally for health such as the National Health Act 2014. This article seeks to call on the government specifically to enact laws to regulate ART in Nigeria as it is becoming a major concern now. This is because since there is no law to regulate the rights of the parties, a party might breach the agreement or infringe on another party’s rights. Also, there is also the risk of safety of these parties. Since the law does not provide for ART, the safety of these persons especially persons who offer to be surrogate are at risk as the other party may not care about the health or safety of the surrogate mother when she develops complications as all they care is the child. Taking into perspectives that most of these assisted reproductions are done in secret, no one can know what happens if the person dies. Due to lack of regulations, there are a lot of babies that are sold as commodities to persons who are in need of children. It has become almost impossible to take count of the amount of problems that comes with the lack of regulation for assisted reproduction practices.
None of the present laws are adequate to address the complexities of assisted reproduction and neither do they provide a specific institution that is responsible for overseeing these practices and ensure that it is in compliance with the law. Though there is already a bill in the House of Representatives which seeks to establish the Nigeria Surrogacy Regulatory Commission (NSRC) to monitor and supervise surrogacy arrangements in Nigeria, however, this bill is yet to be passed into law.
While ART brings hope to these persons, it also comes with its problems and challenges. Therefore, there is need to put laws in place to regulate this practice and addressing all the complexities that come with it. These include the rights of the parties involved, addressing unfounded claims on medical practitioners and more importantly, it would help normalize people using ART thereby encouraging more people to resort to its use. Therefore, specific laws on ART should be enacted in Nigeria as it is obtainable in the developed world such as the United Kingdom which has the Human and Fertilization and Embryology Act (HFEA) which regulates all related aspects of assisted reproduction in the country.
*Amarachi Favour Chinonyerem, a law student of Afe Babalola University, writes from Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State.
