The proposed Child-Parent Security Act (CPSA or the Bill) is legislation that would modernize New York’s domestic relations scheme by repealing the prohibition and criminalization of compensated gestational surrogacy arrangements. The Bill would also streamline the establishment of legal parentage for donor-conceived children and regulate the disposition of frozen embryos. This article refutes some of the recently voiced opposition to the surrogacy component of the Bill and highlights the many benefits it would introduce.
In staunchly opposing the CPSA based upon little more than fundamentalist mores, many critics of the Bill resort to scare tactics and biased caricatures from outdated literature, anomalous cases, and legal myths. In actuality, legalizing and closely regulating compensated surrogacy arrangements would bring New York in line with the majority of other states that permit it, would reconcile New York’s statutory scheme with increasing judicial recognition of alternative family structures—including those formed with the help of assisted reproductive technologies, would extend reproductive freedom to New Yorkers, and would reduce the economic risks and legal uncertainties that result from New Yorkers participating in unregulated altruistic surrogacy arrangements within the state and/or compensated surrogacy arrangements outside the state.
