Tuesday will mark the end of criminalized surrogacy in Michigan
Starting Tuesday it will no longer be a crime to enter into a surrogacy contract in Michigan.
The Michigan Family Protection Act will go into effect April 1, officially repealing a ban that made Michigan the only state in the nation to criminalize surrogacy contracts, with supporters of the legislation saying it also provides long overdue legal safeguards for families formed through assisted reproduction.
Among them is Ginanne Brownell, the communications and research director for the Michigan Fertility Alliance, which advocated for the nine-bill package that also strengthens the rights of children born through surrogacy in arenas such as inheritance and access to their own birth certificates.
'I think it's really important that we change the narrative around surrogacy,' Brownell told the Michigan Advance. 'I think the problem is that for such a long time we've talked about these misconceptions of who surrogates are in the U.S.'
Brownell, who has unexplained infertility, said when she decided to utilize surrogacy, she was surprised to find that there were no agencies willing to work with her in Michigan because of the 1988 Surrogate Parenting Act, which prohibited compensated surrogate parentage contracts.
After finding a surrogate in Illinois who delivered her twins in 2018, Brownell started researching the history Michigan has played in surrogacy.
'Michigan was pivotal to surrogacy across the globe for many, many reasons. The first compensated surrogacy contract in the world was signed in Dearborn in 1976. Noel Keane was the lawyer in that,' Brownell said.
In 1986, she said Keane helped arrange a contract for a New Jersey couple whose embryos were implanted in a surrogate, resulting in the world's first child born through a gestational surrogate in Ypsilanti.
However, that same year a child born through a surrogacy contract arranged by Keane made international headlines when the surrogate mother refused to honor the contract and fled to Florida with the child, sparking a legal battle that spotlighted the ethical implications of surrogacy. The so-called Baby M case resulted in the 1988 ban on compensated surrogacy in Michigan.
'And that's where the law stayed for almost 40 years,' Brownell said, adding that she was introduced to Stephanie Jones, the founder of the Michigan Fertility Alliance while she was working on her book, 'Elusive Mommyhood: An Investigative Reporter's Personal Journey into IVF and Surrogacy'.
'She had her daughter born through surrogacy as well. We both realized we were really passionate about this, and so we both kind of decided, 'Hey, let's try and change the law', Brownell said.
After her twins were born in 2018, Brownell, who works in London while maintaining her residency in Michigan, told the Advance she had an opportunity to interview Gretchen Whitmer as she campaigned for governor.
'Because my kids had just been born, I was back in Michigan for several months waiting for their passports to be issued,' Brownell said. 'And so I was explaining this to her and she said, 'Why is that? That's so weird,'and so we both spoke about it briefly and she said, 'Well, that's something that should be changed' and I was like, 'Yeah, it should be.''
Brownell said she reflected on that conversation when Whitmer signed the legislation into law, which she was present for.
'It felt like it came full circle that we'd had this conversation about changing the law and here we were in the same room where she signed it into law and I had been a part of that,' Brownell said.
The process to get the law changed included testimony from parents across Michigan who related their stories of infertility and frustration at the barriers Michigan had enacted to starting their families.
Among those testifying was state Rep. Samantha Steckloff (D-Farmington Hills), sponsor of the main bill in the package, who said that as a breast cancer survivor, she was unable to conceive naturally due to the chemotherapy treatments she underwent.
'But I was lucky I was able to put off chemo by one month in order to go through IVF [in vitro fertilization] and egg harvesting so that one day I might be able to have a family of my own,' Steckloff said during testimony last year.
Steckloff's bill, HB 5207, established the Assisted Reproduction and Surrogacy Parentage Act, which sets standards for creating a surrogacy contract including that a surrogate be 21 or older, have previously given birth to a child, completed a medical and mental health consultation and have independent legal representation of their choice, all paid for by the intended parents.
Although Whitmer signed the Michigan Family Protection Act into law in April 2024, Republicans in the Legislature actively opposed the measure and refused to give it immediate effect, making it unable to officially begin until 90 days after December 31, when the 102nd Legislature adjourned its session, which will be April 1.
That opposition, supported by the Michigan Catholic Conference and Right to Life of Michigan, was based on concerns that legalized surrogacy contracts can exploit vulnerable women. Among them was state Sen. Thomas Albert (R-Lowell), who urged his colleagues to vote no on the legislation that he contended puts 'vulnerable women at risk of exploitation' and 'fundamentally redefines family.'
Meanwhile, Brownell says the Michigan Fertility Alliance is now launching a new grassroots coalition called State Strong, which will be advocating for surrogacy and fertility access nationwide.
'In a lot of these states they might just have one or two advocates that, for example, they're seeing that there's like really bad IVF legislation in say Nebraska. So they would kind of reach out to us and say, what should we do with the messaging on this? Do you have any legislation that's happened that you can share with us? Because a lot of these people are just kind of like us, volunteers, people who have never really worked on legislation advocacy before. And so State Strong is continuing that fight on a national level now as well,' Brownell said.
While those issues will also get more attention later this month during National Infertility Awareness Week from April 20-26, Brownell says when it comes to the children who are created through surrogacy, the details of how they came to be are not nearly as important as their very existence.
'We need to start asking them how they feel about it. And I think that you have hundreds of thousands of children who are born through surrogacy, the majority of whom are still under the age of 18, but as they start coming of age, they can tell their stories,' Brownell said, pointing to a University of Cambridge 20-year longitudinal study of third-party assisted reproduction which found positive family relationships and child adjustment from childhood to adult life.
'It found that children born through surrogacy, how did they feel about it? They didn't care. It was just like 'Whatever. Why do I care how I was born?''
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But Boone's actions have gone beyond that, as she has read excerpts from books out of context at school board meetings, Beachler said, and posted floods of untrue statements about her on Facebook saying she provides pornography to minors, all culminating in Beachler filing a civil lawsuit against Boone on May 13. 'It's just really hard to talk about. That's why I've actually been working from home a lot. … I mean being called a groomer, being called a pedophile, I was called a whore, a smut peddler,' Beachler said. 'I've been an educator for 37 years and how can somebody call somebody that name that has invested their life in working with kids? It's very hurtful and obviously untrue.' Last June, Boone filed her own lawsuit against Beachler, as well as the school district and several school employees for what she says are violations of her parental rights to challenge indoctrination of students. Boone is being represented by former Republican Michigan attorney general candidate and attorney Matt DePerno, who is currently facing felony charges for reported mishandling of voting equipment after the 2020 election. '[The] defendants have continued to groom children by fostering relationships that include secrecy, undue influence, control, and pushing personal boundaries,' Boone said in her lawsuit against Beachler. '[The] defendants have attempted to and have desensitized children to DEI, SEL, sex, social justice issues, alternate sex and gender ideologies, and liberal political ideology, and through manipulative behavior by showing them pornography or discussing sexual topics with them, and have introduced the idea of sexual contact.' Lapeer library board mulls age restrictions on materials despite shaky legal ground Boone did not return a request for comment at the time of this story's publication. The years of false statements and accusations published on Facebook posts and through public comments at school board meetings came to a fever pitch in February. Beachler said Boone interrupted a tour Beachler was leading a tour alongside two students of a large-scale renovation of a school library to ask where the mature section was. Beachler's lawsuit said Boone filmed the interaction, posting the video with the caption 'Which way to the PORN section please?', which was reposted by individuals with large social media followings like former Republican gubernatorial candidate Garrett Soldano. 'I put up with it for five years. I sent a cease and desist order and asked her to stop. It's only amplified. It's only gotten worse, to the point where I was getting threats,' Beachler said. 'Half of my hair fell out and I've broken several of my teeth from grinding my teeth and I couldn't even work for quite a while because I just couldn't come here without even crying.' In the nearly four decades Beachler has worked in education, Beachler said never before has there been such disrespect and dishonesty when it comes to criticisms of educators. And as Michigan faces a teacher shortage in schools that are already struggling to catch kids up on learning losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, Beachler said misinformation campaigns about the books kids have access to at school take time away from the learning experience. Anyone has the right to talk about how much they disapprove of a book, Beachler said, and Boone can post all she wants on Facebook about how she hates what's in the school library. That's her First Amendment right, Beachler noted. But that's not what Boone's rhetoric or lawsuit is about, she added: it's about destroying trust in public schools at any cost. Lowell is a tight-knit small town community, which Beachler said is filled with 'very wonderful people' who lean conservatively, but in general don't expect people to conform to their own beliefs. There have been, however, some members of the Lowell community that believed what Boone was selling them, especially grandparents, Beachler said. Parental Guidance: A new front emerges in battle between far-right, LGBTQ+ themed books Some of the books that were being brought to their attention, with passages read out of context, aren't even in the school library, Beachler said. And when Boone posted her video in February, Beachler said there was a switch in the community who did not support the calls for violence against her. Several members from the community stood up during the packed March 10 Lowell Area Schools Board of Education meeting following Boone's video posting, who extolled their disgust for the mistreatment of the librarian with calls for civility in conversations about books. 'So much of this is being done … straight from the Moms for Liberty people. It has been done from a Christian movement, and the behavior and the way that they have treated me is so anti-Christ, it's been so the opposite of how a Christian person would treat somebody, with respect and truth,' Beachler said. 'We can have a difference of opinion. That's absolutely fine, and you have the right to make those decisions for your children, but again, to be mean-spirited and say untrue things about a person and call them … horrific names has been incredibly hurtful to me and to my family.'
