IVF Laws Are Changing: What You Need to Know

Okay, my dear, sweet, amazing Joni.

It feels like every few months there is another headline, a proposed bill, a conversation that just leads intended parents, surrogates, egg donors, just wondering like, how could this impact my journey? How are you seeing that uncertainty affect people right now?

Yeah, I think it's very hard on a lot of people, especially since we're in a 24-hour news cycle.

Anything that happens in any state... everybody gets sent into kind of a whirling dervish of a panic.

Obviously, we just had some major changes in Florida that are about to come into effect July 1.

And so we've had upheavals.

We've also had some not favorable press coverage on a few big cases in one out of California cases.

I think the Wall Street Journal is all up in our business at this point.

So I do think just that and just the overall speed of the world right now, right? Everything's changing all of the time.

So I think the good news is surrogacy has been around since the 60s and before that.

We're going to be around soon.

I

just think the important thing is to have boots on the ground.

That is my new mantra in life when it comes to

assisted reproductive technology law.

What I have noticed in my jurisdictions, I practice in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, I obviously have colleagues all over the US that I work with, is that we do have a lot of ground changes, meaning changes to statutory authorities in individual states, some bad like Florida, some good.

We've had Michigan recently that came on board.

So I think what's really important to understand is I think in today's day and age, we have a very active judiciary.

Meaning if at some point in a surrogacy journey, if you're statutorily controlled in your state, it's going to vary when you meet that judge.

In Oklahoma, we meet them before the transfer.

A lot of places you'll meet them pre-birth, meaning the parentage taking place during the pregnancy.

And then we have a handful of states that it's after the fact, right? After the baby's born, when we do that.

Those are the changes that I think are impacting journeys the most.

If you have those fundamental changes on the state level that can either affect how the journey takes place when you can get that legal clearance or always in regards to parentage, that's what I think can send people spiraling I'm wondering why it isn't happening.

And a lot of times it's because they do a Google search, right? Sure.