By Risa A. Levine and Barbara Collura
As we settle into 2016, most of us will engage in the annual ritual of discarding or storing those holiday photo cards displaying happy faces with strong family resemblances. As you sort through them, ask yourself: Did any of your cards include families with a single parent? A same-sex couple? Adopted kids? Foster kids? Kids born from donor egg, sperm or embryo? Also, did you receive any from a family created through a surrogacy arrangement?
How we view “family” reveals a lot about us as people, and as a society. New Yorkers embrace all family formations and celebrate the diversity that has been New York’s rich history. New York is at the forefront in recognizing alternative families, one of the first to grant marriage equality.
But did you know New York bears the shame of having one of the most restrictive, discriminatory laws barring having a child via surrogacy? An archaic and anachronistic law passed in 1992 makes it nearly impossible for families in New York to avail themselves of a gestational carrier — a woman who carries the pregnancy but has no genetic link to the resulting child.
If you live in New York and were born without a uterus, or you have a medical condition that makes pregnancy life-threatening, or your cancer has rendered you sterile, or you are a man with a male partner, or your medical condition causes miscarriage after miscarriage, you are out of luck. New York is about the worst place for you to be. Your only hope is to build your family, at far greater expense and emotional burden, with the help of a carrier in a surrogacy-friendly state like Connecticut, Massachusetts, or even Georgia or Texas.
Years of positive experiences with surrogacy in the 21 surrogacy-friendly states put to rest the objection that surrogacy is exploitive. Thoughtful laws in these states protect all parties, including the carrier and, most importantly, the baby born from a gestational carrier. That is all New York needs: a good law that addresses the needs of hopeful parents and protects everyone.
The New York Legislature can shed the antiquated and discriminatory restriction and be a leader in caring about families. The Assembly and Senate have before them a bill (S2765 and A4319) that would legalize gestational carrier arrangements in New York, and would set forth best practices for surrogacy arrangements to ensure that the child has legal parents.
Passing this bill will ensure that New Yorkers who need it have this option when it comes to building their family. Now is the time to give everyone the opportunity in a legal, safe, and protected way to create their family, and have the chance to send that holiday greeting card with their own beautiful, smiling child.
• Risa A. Levine is a New York attorney and former infertility patient. Barbara Collura is president and CEO of RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association.