New York Bill Would Protect All Children Born Through Assisted Reproduction and Legalize Surrogacy

New York State, where the Stonewall Riots accelerated the LGBTQ rights movement, is in many ways one of the most LGBTQ-friendly states around. Yet the state’s laws do not yet effectively protect families created through assisted reproductive technologies. That could change very soon.

The Child Parent Security Act, sponsored by Senator Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, would update New York law to support and protect families that use reproductive technologies, such as assisted insemination, in vitro fertilization, or gestational surrogacy. The bill would allow intended parents who use a sperm or egg donor to have a secure legal relationship with the child from the moment of birth. As I hope you all know by now, having both parents’ names on the birth certificate is not enough. That’s why LGBTQ legal experts still recommend that non-gestational parents still do second-parent adoptions. Such adoptions, however, usually are expensive, take several months to happen after the child’s birth (leaving the child legally vulnerable), and involve lots of paperwork and an intrusive home study. The New York legislation would allow parents to instead seek a Judgment of Parentage, involving a much cheaper, simpler process (a single court visit), which could be completed before the child is born, and no home study. As a court judgment, this would be as legally binding as a second-parent adoption. (For those paying extra close attention: A Judgment of Parentage is somewhat different from the “Voluntary Acknowledgement of Parentage” (VAP) forms that some states are now implementing. Speak with a lawyer if you are considering either; my non-lawyerly take is that the VAP forms are even simpler and easier than even a Judgment of Parentage, since you don’t have to go to court, but they are not yet as legally tested in many states.)

The bill would also legalize gestational surrogacy (where the surrogate is not genetically connected to the child because she did not contribute her egg), provided that the arrangement follows “best practices” that protect the interests of the surrogate, intended parents, and child. New York is one of only two states that currently criminalizes compensated surrogacy. Under the bill, compensation would be allowed for medical and insurance expenses related to gamete retrieval and storage, the pregnancy, and up to eight weeks of recovery, but not for purchase of gametes or embryos or to pay for relinquishing a parental interest in a child, and may not be conditioned upon the purported quality or genetic traits of the gametes or embryos.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and talk-show host Andy Cohen, a gay dad, wrote an op-ed at BuzzFeed the other day in support of the bill, focusing on the legalization of surrogacy (and on another important bill that would eliminate “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses in court). Just as important, however, are the bill’s Judgment of Parentage provisions. Don’t believe me? Consider the BuzzFeed piece by Allison Hope, a New Yorker and queer mom, about her and her wife’s experience getting a second-parent adoption. She writes, “First I gave birth to my son. Then, after background checks, social worker visits, court dates, and $7,000 in costs, a judge made legal what my wife and I already knew: that we were his parents.” Many of us have been there, too.

There are now six days left in this New York legislative session. If you live in New York, visit the Protecting Modern Families Coalition, led by Family Equality Council, to learn more and find out how to urge your elected officials now to support the bill. You can also declare your support of the bill at the New York Senate website.