Michigan Family Protection Act
Michigan Family Protection Act
A Historic Victory for Michigan Families
On April 1, 2024, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed the Michigan Family Protection Act (MFPA) into law, marking a historic transformation of Michigan's laws governing surrogacy, assisted reproduction, and legal parentage.
The nine-bill package modernized laws that had failed to keep pace with advances in fertility care and the many ways families are formed today.
The Michigan Family Protection Act took effect on April 2, 2025, making compensated gestational surrogacy legal in Michigan and creating clearer legal protections for children, parents, and gestational carriers.
Michigan Fertility Alliance helped lead the grassroots advocacy effort that made it possible.
Why Michigan's Law Needed to Change
For decades, Michigan was an outlier.
The state's Surrogate Parenting Act of 1988 was enacted at a time when assisted reproductive technology and gestational surrogacy looked very different than they do today.
Michigan became the first state in the country to criminalize compensated surrogacy contracts and ultimately remained the only state where participation in compensated contractual surrogacy could carry criminal penalties.
Surrogacy contracts were not legally recognized, leaving intended parents and gestational carriers without the protections a legally recognized agreement can provide.
And the problems extended beyond surrogacy.
Michigan's outdated parentage laws did not adequately account for families formed through modern assisted reproductive technology, creating unnecessary legal uncertainty for parents and children.
What That Meant for Michigan Families
For people who could not safely carry a pregnancy, Michigan law created enormous legal, financial, and emotional barriers to building a family through gestational surrogacy.
Some Michiganders left the state to pursue surrogacy in states with clearer legal protections, adding significant travel, legal, medical, and logistical costs to an already complex family-building journey.
Others pursued uncompensated surrogacy arrangements with friends or family members in Michigan but faced uncertainty over whether courts would recognize their parental rights before birth.
In some cases, parents were forced to pursue adoption proceedings to establish legal parentage of their own children.
This wasn't simply a paperwork problem.
Legal parentage is fundamental to a child's security and well-being.
A legally recognized parent-child relationship affects a parent's ability to make medical and educational decisions for their child and can affect rights and benefits involving health insurance, inheritance, Social Security, custody, and more.
Michigan families deserved better.
Understanding Gestational Surrogacy
Gestational surrogacy is a form of assisted reproduction in which a person carries a pregnancy for intended parent or parents.
In gestational surrogacy, an embryo is created through IVF and transferred to the gestational carrier. The gestational carrier does not provide the egg used to create the embryo and therefore does not have a genetic relationship to the child.
People pursue gestational surrogacy for many reasons.
Some cannot safely carry a pregnancy because of cancer or previous cancer treatment, congenital conditions, the absence or loss of a uterus, serious medical conditions, recurrent pregnancy loss, or complications from previous pregnancies.
Surrogacy can also provide a pathway to parenthood for LGBTQ+ families and others who cannot carry a pregnancy themselves.
For some people, gestational surrogacy is not simply one family-building option among many. It is their only path to having a biological child.
Michigan Has a Unique Place in Surrogacy History
Michigan's relationship with surrogacy is particularly significant.
In 1986, one of the earliest babies in the world born through gestational surrogacy was born here in Michigan.
Just two years later, Michigan enacted one of the country's most restrictive surrogacy laws.
For nearly four decades, advances in fertility medicine continued while Michigan law remained largely frozen in time.
Families changed. Medicine changed. Assisted reproduction changed.
Michigan law needed to change with them.
What the Michigan Family Protection Act Changed
The Michigan Family Protection Act created a modern legal framework that recognizes how families are formed today.
Among its important reforms, the MFPA:
Legalized and Regulated Gestational Surrogacy
Michigan law now recognizes qualifying gestational surrogacy agreements, including compensated arrangements, and establishes requirements designed to protect everyone involved.
Established Clearer Paths to Parentage
The law provides clearer legal pathways for establishing parentage for children born through assisted reproduction and surrogacy.
Protected Children
Children should not face legal uncertainty because of the way they were conceived or born. The MFPA helps ensure children have a secure legal relationship with their parents.
Protected Intended Parents
Families using assisted reproduction and surrogacy now have clearer legal mechanisms for establishing and protecting their parental rights.
Protected Gestational Carriers
A regulated legal framework provides protections for gestational carriers, including requirements surrounding agreements and the surrogacy process.
Modernized Michigan Family Law
The MFPA brought Michigan law closer in line with modern fertility medicine and the realities of families formed through assisted reproduction.
How MFA Changed the Law
The Michigan Family Protection Act didn't happen overnight.
Michigan Fertility Alliance was founded in 2019 by people with lived experience who understood firsthand how Michigan's outdated laws were hurting families.
What began as grassroots advocacy grew into a statewide effort to change Michigan law.
In September 2021, MFA, with support from RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, organized Michigan's first Infertility Advocacy Day focused on educating lawmakers about the harms caused by the state's outdated surrogacy laws.
The response demonstrated the power of families telling their own stories:
100+ advocates participated.
50 meetings were held with lawmakers and legislative staff.
500 letters from constituents were sent to lawmakers urging reform.
But Advocacy Day was only the beginning.
MFA continued organizing families, educating lawmakers, building coalitions, working with legal and policy experts, sharing lived experiences, and advocating for comprehensive reform.
MFA worked alongside national legal and academic experts and other stakeholders to help develop the legislation that ultimately became the Michigan Family Protection Act.
The nine-bill package was introduced in the Michigan Legislature by Rep. Samantha Steckloff and advanced through the House and Senate before reaching the governor's desk.
On April 1, 2024, surrounded by advocates and families who had spent years fighting for change, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed the Michigan Family Protection Act into law.
From Criminalization to Protection
The significance of this change cannot be overstated.
Michigan went from having one of the most restrictive surrogacy laws in America to having a modern framework designed to protect families formed through assisted reproduction.
For the families who spent decades navigating Michigan's old system, this victory was deeply personal.
For future Michigan families, it means something even bigger:
They won't have to fight the same fight.
The Michigan Family Protection Act demonstrates what is possible when people with lived experience come together with advocates, policymakers, medical professionals, attorneys, and experts to create smart, evidence-based, pro-family policy.
The Work Doesn't End Here
Passing the Michigan Family Protection Act was a historic victory—but protecting family building requires continued advocacy.
MFA continues to work to protect the progress Michigan families have made, advance access to fertility care, and ensure state policy keeps pace with medicine and the realities of modern families.
We changed Michigan law. Now we're working to protect it—and build on it.
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