For National Infertility Week, we are ready to #startasking the tough questions. One tough question: What is the legal access to all family building options nationwide?
In Pennsylvania, and nationwide, we have begun to see cutting-edge options for family formation and the laws that are developing around this trend.
These various legal family building options protect the intended parents and parties involved to establish rights to the children born of ART. They may include gestational carrier/surrogacy actions; traditional surrogacy actions; ovum donor agreements, known or anonymous; embryo donor agreements, known or anonymous; sperm donor agreements, known or anonymous; pre and post-birth orders; step-parent adoptions and LGBT family formation.
As yet, there is no law in Pennsylvania that establishes the parameters of these arrangements or parentage of children who are born of assisted reproductive technology, since the laws on parentage are established from state laws, and the legal parental rights established by one state may not necessarily be recognized by another.
Due to the lack of uniform interpretation/application of parentage laws between states, the only way that an intended parent can have full protection is to obtain a court order establishing parentage or an adoption decree to ensure full, faith and credit by other states of the intended parents’ rights, regardless if the non-genetic parent is listed on a birth certificate or may be recognized as a parent under the marital presumption of that state, as is the case in Pennsylvania, since neither is a full protection or guarantee for our parents.
Therefore, legal access to all family building options only starts with the agreements and opportunities through donation and surrogacy but ultimately legal access is most important in securing parentage that is recognizable by all states nationwide.
All this week, KingSpry’s ART Law Practice Group is marking Infertility Week by summarizing related legal issues. #StartAsking – and stay posted.
heARTbeat is a publication of KingSpry’s Adoption Law and Assisted Reproductive Technology Law Practice Group. It is meant to be informational and does not constitute legal advice.
