Three Ways to Be an Advocate for Surrogacy Law

It may surprise you to learn that despite being a core feature of modern family building, surrogacy is not legal in every state. California, Oregon and Washington state are considered “surrogacy friendly” states, for instance. In California, not only is surrogacy legal, but intended parents’ names will appear on the resulting baby’s birth certificate. Washington state only legalized paid surrogacy in 2019. In other states, such as Michigan and New York, compensated surrogacy is illegal.

Each state has a unique approach to surrogacy laws and statutes, which means if you decide to work with a surrogate, you’ll need to consult a fertility attorney to make sure you follow all the correct legal procedures before, during and after having a baby via surrogate.

If surrogacy laws aren’t protecting your rights in your state, consider volunteering your time for surrogacy law advocacy. Here are three steps you can take:

1. Start or join an advocacy group
This doesn’t have to be a large or formal nonprofit organization. You can gather some like-minded friends, open a social media account such as Facebook and start to get the word out about why surrogacy laws matter.

2. Write to government officials
You and your advocacy group can encourage people in your state to write or call state officials, asking for revisions to existing surrogacy laws or even brand-new legislation. Organize an online petition through change.org or similar to collect as many in-state signatures as possible. This will demonstrate the abundance of support for surrogacy among a respective politician’s constituency, and hopefully encourage that official to work on behalf of surrogacy-friendly legislation.

3. Get and stay informed
Keeping up with your group’s social media channel by reading and sharing related news articles that are published by legitimate news outlets is a terrific way to stay informed yourself. Plus, you’ll be able to see if any of your petitions and letter-writing or phone-call campaigns are working.

If you live in a state where surrogacy laws don’t protect the rights of surrogates and intended parents alike, make surrogacy illegal, or don’t even address surrogacy at all, AND you feel passionate about traditional or gestational surrogacy, volunteering as a surrogacy law advocate might be the right step for you.

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