Surrogacy Legislation In South Dakota Makes Surrogacy A FelonyWhat is going on with surrogacy legislation? Important surrogacy legislation information. New surrogacy legislation in South Dakota. Surrogacy in South Dakota has turned dangerous. Would you be offended if I asked you to please click on the Google +1 button below? Also, you can help by playing it forward. Please share/socialize/bookmark at bottom of each page you go to. Important! Doing both means Google will advance page upward in the search results. Thank you very very much
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SURROGACY LEGISLATIONsurrogacy Legislation by Steven Snyder, Esq. - Courtesy AFA - American Fertility Association "Fertility is an apolitical condition. It affects those who share political beliefs with independents, liberals, and conservatives alike. Treating infertility is about creating new families, a quintessentially universal dream that cuts across all political, religious, and social demographics. Those who succeed in having the children they so desperately want generally become more conscious role models and more involved members of both their communities and society as a whole. Allowing those who struggle with infertility to exercise their procreative liberty through all medical and social options available to them has only positive benefits for our society and our national stability. Fertility comes in all shapes and sizes. Infertility is caused equally by female factor, male factor, and undetermined reasons. It is caused by genetic anomalies, physiology, disease, and, in all liklihood, our environment. Sometimes infertility can be successfully treated with medications or straightforward medical procedures using the affected parent(s)' own reproductive components (egg, sperm, and uterus). Sometimes successful treatment requires the voluntary cooperation and support of third parties who willingly and happily provide one or more of those missing components. These third parties, these "reproductive saviors," come in the form of sperm donors, egg donors, and gestational carriers. These people know the value of having a family, and they choose to help those who cannot realize this dream without assistance. Clearly, the medical and social options to treat infertility have outdistanced the legislative infrastructure that is necessary to support the intended parentage of the children who result from the various treatments. Although most states have statutes that automatically establish parentage when sperm donors are used, thereby offering a simple solution to male infertility through sperm donation, few states have similar statutory support for egg donation or gestational surrogacy. Furthermore, the existing sperm donor statutes only apply to a very narrowly defined traditional family, one that no longer necessarily dominates our social structure. Our current legal framework for fertility clearly discriminates against women who suffer from infertility and non-traditional families, whether intentionlly or inadvertently. Our overall social and political objective should be to correct this imbalance and facilitate equal opportunity for infertile women and non-traditional families to have children. It is simply the socially responsible thing to do. When the Baby M decision was issued by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1987, surrogacy was virtually unknown, and it typically involved a genetically-related carrier, also known as a traditional surrogate. This combination startled society and lawmakers, and, in the next five years, approximately ten states passed legislation that banned or restricted such arrangements. Then the medical advances eliminated the surrogate's genetic relationship through IVF, and the California Supreme Court issued its decision in Johnson v. Calvert in 1992 affirming the legal parentage of the intended parents in a gestational surrogacy dispute. Since then, society has generally accepted surrogacy, and every state that has passed legislation relating to surrogacy has either distinguished it from adoption and/or baby-selling or expressly allowed it. Things were moving in the right direction. That brings me back to the apolitical nature of infertility. Infertiliity legislation should be continuing to move forward in all states to facilitate family building of all varieties, including surrogacy. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The fiscal conservatives who have been brought into power are also social conservative who oppose infertility treatment in general and surrogacy specifically. This is nowhere more evident than in South Dakota (see below) where extremely regressive and onerous legislation to criminalize surrogacy has been introduced. Physicians, agencies, and persons who participate in "commercial" surrogacy are guilty of felonies, and individuals who participate in non-commercial surrogacy are subject to fines of at least $30,000. The law says the resulting child is placed with the surrogate as the parent unless the surrogate is unfit, and if the surrogate does not want the child, the child may be placed for adoption. This proposed legislation is out of place in intent, content, and time. It ignores the reality and general social acceptance of surrogacy, and it abridges various constitutional rights by trying to inappropriately legislate parentage against the parties' intent. This will not be the last ill-advised and regressive social policy that comes out of the numerous conservative state legislatures that have been placed in power. Those who experience infertility should be prepared to make themselves heard to protect and further the rights of the infertile by strenuously lobbying against and soundly defeating such legislation. They shoud make themselves heard whether they are fiscal conservatives, liberals, or independents. If this is not done, the rights of many to build stable families will be unfairly and inappropriately impaired."
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