FAMILIES
A Sudden Split in Albany Surrogacy Rights Push
After falling short last year, Democratic lawmakers now divided on right approach
BY MATT TRACY
A contentious battle is
heating up in the State
Legislature over competing
bills that would
legalize surrogacy rights in New
York after a version proposed by out
gay Manhattan State Senator Brad
Hoylman and Westchester Assemblymember
Amy Paulin stalled last
year amid concerns about women’s
rights and welfare.
Hoylman and Paulin are again
pushing their bill, which has
strong support from Governor Andrew
Cuomo, but Manhattan State
Senator Liz Krueger, out gay Manhattan
Assemblymember Daniel
O’Donnell, and Assemblymember
Didi Barrett of Dutchess and
Columbia Counties are barreling
ahead with their own version that
they say was crafted based on further
evaluation of the previous bill
and feedback from women who
voiced concerns with last year’s
proposal. Krueger and Barrett
are listed as lead sponsors on the
bills.
“The other bill laid dormant for
a very long time and no outreach
was done to women’s groups to fi nd
out where they would fall on this,”
O’Donnell asserted in an interview
with Gay City News on February
21.
There are signifi cant differences
between the two pieces of legislation.
The new bill, listed as S7717
in the Senate and A9847 in the Assembly,
would not just legalize gestational
surrogacy, which entails a
woman carrying a baby unrelated
to her, but also genetic surrogacy,
which is when a woman carries a
baby conceived through fertilization
of her own egg. Hoylman and
Paulin’s version of the bill only addresses
gestational surrogacy.
Hoylman, who has had two children
through gestational surrogacy
with his husband, David Sigal,
argues his bill contains the “strongest
legal protections” for surrogates
— and it is true that the bill
requires intended parents to cover
costs such as healthcare and independent
legal representation for the
State Senator Liz Krueger (at podium) is lead sponsor of an alternative surrogacy bill that differs from
the one championed by her out gay Senate colleague Brad Hoylman.
surrogates, many of whom become
surrogates for economic reasons.
One key point of contention
in the bill put forth by Krueger,
O’Donnell, and Barrett is a requirement
that intended parents
undergo medical and psychological
evaluations, a home study, and
background checks.
The National Center for Lesbian
Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates
and Defenders, Lambda Legal, the
LGBT Bar Association of Greater
New York, and the Family Equality
Council penned a letter to Krueger,
O’Donnell, and Barrett ripping
their bill for several reasons, including
those requirements forced
upon intended parents. They stated
that the requirements unfairly
harm LGBTQ families because
“this kind of investigation and evaluation
would be unthinkable for
parents who planned to have children
through sexual intercourse…
Surrogacy is not an adoption…”
Another key difference between
the bills involves the point at
which the intended parents offi -
cially become the child’s legal parents.
Hoylman’s bill calls for prearranged
agreements stipulating
that the intended parents gain full
legal rights of the child upon birth,
FACEBOOK/ STATE SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER
but the alternative bill imposes an
eight-day waiting period after the
baby is born during which the intended
parents and the surrogate
share responsibility for the child.
By the conclusion of that period
the surrogate can submit a notarized
declaration that would offi -
cially hand over full responsibility
for and authority over the child to
the intended parents.
That, of course, comes with a
big question: What happens if a
surrogate refuses to legally hand
over a child to a biological parent
and their spouse who have spent
months paying tens of thousands
of dollars to have a child through
surrogacy? In a phone interview
with Gay City News, Krueger defended
the provision and downplayed
worst-case scenarios, saying
that it is rare that a surrogate
would refuse to give up a child.
“The more careful and transparent
and deliberate and informed
this can be set up, the less likely
it is the surrogate would change
their mind,” Krueger said.
“But it is true that the surrogate
is carrying the embryo through
pregnancy to delivery. It’s taking
their blood, their nutrients — everything
you’re going through
as a surrogate, the baby is going
through. I just think, having talked
to all kinds of human rights lawyers,
that it makes good sense.”
When asked what would happen
if a surrogate refuses to give up the
child, Krueger was less specifi c,
saying it would be “a judicial issue
for courts to determine how they
interpret that contract and what
they believe is the best interest of
the child.”
The tensions surrounding surrogacy
fl ared last year when Cuomo
tried rallying support for Hoylman’s
bill in the fi nal weeks of the
legislative session. The bill passed
the Senate, though it ran into a
wall in the lower house and never
reached the Assembly fl oor after
critics — including out lesbian
Assemblymember Deborah Glick
— expressed reservations about
the health of surrogates and egg
donors who are often subjected to
rigorous hormone treatment and a
grueling nine-month surrogacy.
In phone interviews on February
21, both Krueger and Hoylman
made it abundantly clear that they
respect one another and have a
shared goal of legalizing surrogacy
in the right way. But there are
large gaps between them on the
path forward and those divisions
are becoming more visible with the
introduction of a competing bill.
Krueger said multiple state senators
who voted for Hoylman’s proposal
last year have told her that
they will no longer support it.
Faced with fresh competition,
Hoylman is hitting back at the alternative
bill. Notably, he blasted
the eight-day window in Krueger’s
bill as a “non-starter” and pointed
to scenarios under which the intended
parents could endure the
entire process and come out of it
empty-handed and heartbroken.
“Imagine going through a compensated
surrogacy arrangement
having a successful transfer, the
child is born, and then the woman
acting as surrogate changes her
mind and wants to fi le for parental
rights,” Hoylman said. “That’s
➤ SURROGACY SKIRMISH, continued on p.15
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