The surrogate parenting act was signed into law by Governor James Blanchard and went into effect on September 1, 1988.

Description

This bill package established surrogate parentage contracts as contrary to public policy and made any such contracts void under Michigan law. It outlawed the use of surrogacy contracts for compensation and made it a felony to attempt to use a surrogacy contract.

Background

Michigan is one of a handful states in the United States to criminalize surrogacy contracts. In most parts of Europe, surrogacy is an unlawful procedure including in Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Iceland, and Moldavia. Surrogacy is also not allowed in many parts of Asia including Pakistan, Japan, China, Turkey, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia. For-profit surrogacy is banned in Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Brazil, Britain, and Australia, but, like Michigan, they all allow some forms of altruistic surrogacy. Many other countries allow surrogacy contracts, as do most of the states in the U.S. Though on the surface surrogacy contracts appear harmless, as they allow for intended parents to receive a child while compensating the woman helping to bear the child; however, the unintended consequences of these contracts can quickly devolve into harm for women and children through surrogate trafficking, baby selling rings, and exploitation of impoverished women. Furthermore, surrogacy contracts almost always involve an abortion clause, forcing the pregnant woman to abort the child if the intended parents change their mind in the middle of the process, regardless of what the pregnant woman wants or thinks. In essence, a woman will lose control of her own body and that of an innocent child every time she enters into a surrogacy contract. IVF is also frequently used in surrogacy contracts leading to the loss of unborn children through discarding of embryos or “selective reduction” of embryos in utero, ether to increase the chances for one child to be born or simply because the parents who are paying the surrogate want fewer babies. Surrogacy contracts always turn the child into a marketable commodity.

History

In 1985 the issue of surrogacy burst onto the national stage in the wake of the baby “M” case which originated with a contract drawn-up by Dearborn, MI attorney for the commissioning parents. This case involved traditional surrogacy whereby the surrogate is inseminated with the intended father’s or an anonymous donor’s sperm making the surrogate also the biological mother. The surrogate mother initially relinquished the child to the parents as per the contract, however, she was suicidal over being separated from the baby she had born and kidnapped the baby the next day. The baby was in the surrogate mother’s custody for 87 days until the court ordered her returned to the intended parents, thus becoming the first American court ruling on the validity of surrogacy.

Since the mid-1980’s, the practice of surrogacy has skyrocketed around the world and has moved from traditional surrogacy to gestational surrogacy. Gestational surrogacy involves the use of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF creates embryos in the lab with either sperm and egg from the biological parents, donors, or a combination of both. Today, 95% of all surrogate pregnancies are gestational surrogacy and the surrogate is not biologically related to the child.

In 1988 Michigan became the first state in the nation to outlaw surrogacy contracts with this public act. Current Michigan law permits non-compensated, altruistic surrogacy, but bans contracts for surrogacy for the protection of both the child and the mother.