Michigan is one of the few states that has outlawed compensated surrogacy contracts, meaning that it is illegal for individuals in Michigan to pay someone else to carry a baby for them. Those who do have a child by surrogate are left with layers of bureaucratic and logistical barriers to gaining parental rights over their child.
Stateside spoke with Adam Taylor, who had a baby several years ago with his husband, Doug, through a surrogate. Though he now lives in California, Taylor mentors other families in Michigan who are looking at surrogacy as an option and continues to advocate for change in Michigan’s surrogacy laws.
Path to surrogacy
The Taylors knew early on in their relationship that they wanted to have a family. Before navigating surrogacy, they first considered adoption. However, many adoption agencies in Michigan are run by Catholic Charities. Based on legislation passed in Michigan in 2015, child-placing agencies are allowed to deny services that “conflict with the agency’s sincerely held religious beliefs.” For the Taylors, this meant that they were directed to other adoption agencies.
Having previously been involved with adoption advocacy in the past, Taylor knew that adoption would be a lengthy and arduous process. The Taylors started looking into surrogacy.
But with surrogacy came a new set of bridges to cross. A 1988 Michigan surrogacy law prohibits having a surrogacy contract. This means that the child’s genetic parents have no legal standing or protection; the surrogate has complete legal authority over all decisions leading up to the birth and at birth.
However, there are a multitude of other steps that precede any potential legal complications of having a surrogate — and this is often an even longer and more costly process for LGBTQ+ couples. Taylor said that he and Doug had to be tested for HIV, and that he, having lived in Europe within the last two decades, had to have additional screening. They also went through psychological screenings and set up a family trust.
And this was all before getting an egg donor. By the time they had found an egg donor, Taylor said that they had spent tens of thousands of dollars and were a year and a half into this process.
Now, they needed to find a surrogate who would pass the clinic’s screening requirements.
“Basically, we were left with Googling and Facebooking, trying to figure out what we're going to do — unless we were going to leave the state,” Taylor said. “And we were debating, while building our house in Holly, would we potentially have to leave the state in order to go to a state [where] we could go to an agency or a clinic? And all of this could be done with professional services rather than us trying to piece this together on our own.”
Taylor said that the fertility clinic told him that they had seen same-sex couples get as far into the surrogacy process as the Taylors had, but never past it. Taylor was devastated.
“I kind of broke down crying because I was like, we're two or three years into this process and tens of thousands of dollars then and I don't think this is going to move forward unless we leave the state,” Adam said.
Adam shared his story on Facebook. After seeing Taylor’s post, a family friend reached out and said that she would be their surrogate.
“She said … ‘I'm the Easy-Bake Oven and let’s do this,’” Taylor recounted. “About a couple months later, we got the call. The transfer took, and we were on our way.”
Obtaining parental rights
To avoid additional administrative or legal complications upon their son’s birth, Taylor said that they worked with several law firms to get a pre-birth certificate order (PBO). The couple had to go in front of a judge for both of them to be named on the birth certificate as parent and parent.
“When we got that PBO, we were the first male male married couple [in Michigan] to get that,” Adam said.
Having a PBO meant that the Taylors would not have to go through the adoption process for their son.
“Both of us were present at the birth and we signed, at birth, the documents for the issuing of the birth certificate at U of M Hospital, which was huge. So much so, I felt like half the hospital came to see us, because no one had seen this where two men were in Michigan signing a birth certificate at birth, involved at the birth, with a surrogate. And nonetheless, during COVID,” Taylor said.
All told between attorneys, doctors, insurance, and medical bills, Taylor said that they spent over six figures.
A new surrogacy bill package
Taylor has used his personal experience with surrogacy to push for changes in the process, on both a corporate and legislative level. While working at Chrysler, he said that he advocated to include surrogacy benefits as a part of the retirement package for salaried employees.
Taylor has also advocated for a bill package, sponsored by Senator Samantha Steckloff (D-Farmington Hills), that will legalize surrogacy contracts. So far the bill has passed in the House, but has not been voted on in the Senate yet.
With these bills, Taylor said that people will have agencies and organizations to turn to instead of Google or Facebook.
To hear more about their story, listen to the Stateside Podcast.
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