What We Do

What is Michigan Fertility Alliance?

Michigan Fertility Alliance (MFA), founded in 2019, is a grassroots movement working on multiple issues around infertility, including changing the state’s antiquated 1988 Surrogate Parenting Act and legally protecting the child-parent rights for all children born via assisted reproduction and surrogacy. To learn more about the people behind MFA, please visit our leadership page.

What is MFA doing?

In September 2021, MFA organized the state’s first Michigan Infertility Advocacy Day. The focus was to bring awareness to the outdated surrogacy laws in Michigan. Our advocates met with 50 lawmakers to speak with them about the hardships caused by the Surrogate Parenting Act of 1988.

MFA is comprised of over 100 infertility organizations and advocates who have participated in meetings with lawmakers and staff, along with crafting letters of support from constituents to send to lawmakers asking for their support.

MFA’s solution: Change the Law.

As per our landing page, on March 19, 2024 the Michigan Senate voted to pass the Michigan Family Protection Act (MFPA). The MFA, along with a number of national legal and academic scholars in the surrogacy and parentage space, wrote the legislation that was presented as a nine bill package to the Michigan House by Rep. Samantha Steckloff, (D) Farmington Hills. Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed the MFPA into law on April 1st, 2024. The law will go into effect 90 days after the end of the current legislative session.

Surrogacy in Michigan explained…

Can you give me a bit of background about surrogacy?

Over 300,000 Michiganders who want to have children can’t. One in six Michigan couples has trouble conceiving or carrying a pregnancy to term. For many people, having children is a fundamental life function, and involuntary childlessness affects people physically, emotionally, and financially.

Some women cannot carry a pregnancy because of medical conditions, such as heart disease, cancer, lupus, and Type 1 diabetes, complications from prior pregnancies, or they may not have a uterus or suffer from recurrent miscarriages and unexplained infertility. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Medical Association (AMA) and theAmerican Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), medical infertility is a disease. Like any other disease, medical infertility is not a choice. Others, meanwhile, may suffer from social infertility.

Many infertile patients may turn to surrogacy to build their families as their last option for treating their infertility. For those who are unable to safely carry a pregnancy due to pre-existing health issues, surrogacy is their only option for having a biological child. Surrogacy is widely proven to be safe and effective.

From planned conception (carried out by a licensed physician called a reproductive endocrinologist) to birth, a child born from surrogacy is the intended parents' child and is not genetically linked to the gestational carrier. Surrogacy enables some infertile couples to have a baby, and in some cases, surrogacy may be a couple’s only hope to have a family. Interestingly, the first baby born in the world born via a gestational carrier was in Michigan back in 1986.

So, what’s been the deal with Michigan? 

Sadly, many people were unable to build their families using surrogacy because of the insurmountable legal, financial, and emotional challenges associated with their path to parenthood. These obstacles were largely due to the outdated nature of the Surrogate Parenting Act of 1988 that did not recognize a surrogate contract.   What that means is that there were no legal safeguards or administrative guidelines.

This out-of-date law proved to be crippling for those individuals and families where their only option is gestational carrier surrogacy. Michigan, which was the first state in all of the U.S. to make surrogacy contracts a felony, was the only state that criminalized contractional surrogacy. (For more on the vital role that Michigan played in the history of global surrogacy, please go here).

Additionally, Michigan did not provide a clear pathway to parentage rights for those parents who used a Michigan-based friend or family member to carry their baby to birth. Because there was no transparent guidance from the 1988 law, a majority of Michigan judges denied pre-birth parentage rights, and the biological parents were forced to adopt their own child after birth. That can take years and can come with significant legal costs. One of life’s most fundamental joys has been shrouded in red tape and hurdles.

These are just some of the pitfalls of the 1988 law, which had been left frozen in time when surrogacy was very rare and very different. Today, in the U.S., about 2% of all assisted reproductive technology cycles involve a gestational carrier. As such, Michigan needed a law in line with current times that protects all participants in the gestational carrier surrogacy process with explicit and necessary regulations.

MFA believes it was unfair that Michiganders had to leave the state to seek legal safety in other states with coherent pro-family building gestational carrier laws. This incurred unneeded exorbitant costs and created undue stress. And for those who did choose to do surrogacy in the state would have to adopt their own children. MFA strongly feels that contracts help everyone involved -- the gestational carriers, the intended parents, and the children.

The inability to carry a pregnancy is a common problem with a standard solution, and we needed safe access to the solution here in Michigan. Now, we have it with the Michigan Family Protection Act. 

What did MFA do about it?

In September 2021, MFA—with the support of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association—organized the state’s first Michigan Infertility Advocacy Day. The focus was to bring awareness to the outdated surrogacy laws in Michigan. Advocates met with their lawmakers to speak with them about the hardships caused by the Surrogate Parenting Act of 1988.

—Over 100 infertility advocates participated

—50 meetings were held with lawmakers and their staff

—That totaled over 20 hours of attention given to pro-family surrogacy reform

—500 letters of support from constituents were sent to lawmakers asking for   their support

Through advocacy, education, and outreach, MFA fought for legal reforms on surrogacy in Michigan, and we now have the Michigan Family Protection Act in place.