Michigan ends ban on surrogacy contracts

Alex Kamer considers herself lucky — she didn’t have to fight a legal battle for the parental rights to her biological children.

Kamer and her husband, Alan Kamer, grew their family via surrogates; their younger son was born in June. But the couple lives in Michigan, where a 1988 law had banned the use of surrogacy contracts and compensated surrogacy. That had left uncertainty about what could happen once the baby was born last year.

Michigan was the last state in the country with such a law on its books, and for more than 30 years, those who violated it could, in extreme cases, face jail time. Couples in the state who sought to use surrogates could not pay them, and had to seek a prebirth order from a judge to ensure parental rights to their children. However, individual judges could choose not to approve an order, and if one wasn’t granted in time, families faced a protracted legal labyrinth or even a lengthy process to adopt their biological children.

“Surrogacy is hard — it’s expensive, it’s an emotional roller coaster, it takes up all of your energy for the years that you’re working towards it,” Kamer, 32, said. “And in Michigan, that added stress for those first seven or eight months of this pregnancy of not knowing if our names would be on his birth certificate.”

The state’s ban ended Monday, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a package of bills into law that do away with the ban on surrogacy contracts, in addition to bolstering safeguards for surrogates, access to in vitro fertilization and protections for LGBTQ+ parents.

The Democratic-backed package thrusts the state further into the national debate around government regulations of reproductive health care, which has expanded beyond abortion access. Heading