A Dutch court has ordered the state to provide an emergency travel document for the Netherlands for a test tube baby born in India last year. In November 2010, the Dutch consulate in Mumbai turned down the Dutch father's request for a passport or travel document for the child.

The child was conceived in vitro with the Dutchman's sperm and an egg from an unidentified Indian woman and carried to term by an Indian surrogate mother. The birth certificate carries the name of the Dutch father and the surrogate mother.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry argued that the Dutch man's name on the birth certificate did not automatically mean that he could be regarded as the legal father of the child under Dutch law.

The court in Haarlem rejected this argument and ruled that the man could be regarded as or could become the legal father of the child and that the interests of father and child were currently more pressing than those of the state. The judge did not believe the ruling would create a serious precedent.

Amsterdam lawyer Wilma Eusman has told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that a new law regulating surrogate pregnancy is under consideration in India which will require advance permission from the authorities in the parent's country. Although the bill has not yet been passed by parliament, Indian judges are apparently already applying it.
(imm)

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