Recent Surrogacy or Pertaining to Surrogacy Legislation
There’s so much going on in the world of surrogacy legislation! There are lots of recent changes to laws that directly impact the work done by the Bright Futures Families Group. Here are a few of the recent law changes that Bright Futures Families surrogates and intended parents need to know about:
New England Surrogacy’s Connecticut surrogates (and intended parents matching with Connecticut surrogates) now have the benefit of a robust surrogacy and parentage law that governs both surrogacy contracts and pre-birth orders (PBOs). The law is called the Connecticut Parentage Act, and New England Surrogacy was a proud supporter of this bill from the beginning.
This new law represents a big change for Connecticut because the old surrogacy law was very skimpy—we’re talking just a few lines long. The Connecticut Parentage Act is 128 (!!) pages long and covers not just surrogacy but also donor conception. Since many intended parents rely both on a donor and a surrogate, it’s great to see the legal protections expanded to both parts of the process.
The law also puts into place minimum requirements and standards for the surrogacy process in Connecticut. These are in line with best practices and are minimum standards we impose on our surrogacy arrangements even if the law did not require it. And the law is LGBTQ+ friendly, which is right in line with our own philosophies here at the Bright Futures Families team.
Rhode Island also has a Parentage Act now. It’s called the Rhode Island Uniform Parentage Act, and it has many similarities to Connecticut’s Parentage Act. Most importantly, it covers both surrogacy and donor conception.
Unlike Connecticut, Rhode Island previously had no law on surrogacy, which led to unpredictable results in the courts. The new law gives predictable results for surrogacy arrangements, including for LGBTQ+ intended parents. Similar to Connecticut, the Rhode Island law gives guidance on the surrogate and intended parent eligibility, surrogacy contracts, and pre-birth orders, although the technicalities are a little different than the way it works in Connecticut.
We are proud to have supported the passage of the Rhode Island Uniform Parentage Act (and grateful to Governor Gina M. Raimondo for signing it!).
Heading north, we get to New Hampshire, which is also covered by our New England Surrogacy team. New Hampshire has implemented a fertility insurance law that provides insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF) medical procedures. This includes coverage for making embryos, whether they be from your own eggs and sperm or from donated eggs and/or sperm. Since many intended parents need both donated eggs and a surrogate, this kind of donor coverage is very important to make surrogacy affordable. And, while occurring less often with surrogacy arrangements, intended parents using donor sperm or donor embryos (“embryo adoption”) also have coverage.
Coverage for surrogacy arrangements is limited to the making of the embryos and (unfortunately) does not include a screening of the gestational carrier or the embryo transfer procedure performed on her. (You might be wondering about insurance coverage for the surrogate’s pregnancy--that’s not covered under this bill because that falls under “maternity care” and not “fertility treatment”. So we look to different laws for that kind of insurance coverage.)
One unique feature of New Hampshire’s insurance law is that LGBTQ patients cannot be treated differently than other patients. No more of the extra requirements imposed on same-sex couples that we have seen happen in other states! New Hampshire provides a level playing field for everyone! We’re proud to say that one of our Directors at New England Surrogacy, Catherine Tucker, was on the team that wrote and lobbied this bill to get it turned into a law.
Maine:
Following the lead of New Hampshire, Maine also passed a fertility insurance law that provides insurance coverage for IVF, including making embryos from donated genetic materials. Maine’s law actually goes a step further and requires coverage for same-sex couples from the outset of their treatment. This is an unusual feature and one that we hope will make surrogacy more accessible to same-sex intended parents in Maine. New England Surrogacy is proud to be on record supporting this bill!
We’ve talked about a lot of legislation in New England (and there’s more that we will talk about in another post), but for now, let’s head out west to the Centennial State.
The Colorado Legislature sure has been busy enacting surrogacy-related legislation.
Most recently comes the “donor-conceived Persons and Families Of Donor-conceived Persons Protection Act.” That name’s a mouthful but basically what this new law does is require Colorado egg and sperm donors to be identified to the resulting child. No more anonymous donations in Colorado. Colorado intended parents seeking an anonymous donation arrangement will need to use an out-of-state IVF clinic. We have some reservations about this new law, and Colorado Surrogacy Director Ellen Trachman does a good job explaining these in her Above the Law column.
Colorado also passed into law a fertility insurance mandate requiring coverage for IVF treatment. It’s called the Colorado Building Families Act. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. The new law ran into a little snag because of a little-known Affordable Care Act provision so it’s not really providing the expected insurance benefits for now. If you’re interested in the technicalities, Ellen explains them in her ATL column. The Colorado Surrogacy team continues to support the implementation of this bill so Colorado residents can start using their insurance benefits for surrogacy.
And of course, we’d be remiss in not mentioning that Colorado passed its own version of a parentage law, the Colorado Surrogacy Agreement Act. As with the parentage laws passed in New England, the Colorado law sets eligibility requirements for surrogacy arrangements, minimum surrogacy contract requirements, and pre-birth order procedures. Unlike the other parentage laws, however, the Colorado version doesn’t broadly address donor conception.
So that’s a wrap with what has been happening in New England and Colorado. We’ll touch on legislation from the other Bright Futures Families regions (Southwest Surrogacy, Pacific Cascade Surrogacy, Montana Surrogacy, and Texas Surrogacy) in a future column.