When Rachael Lang got married, she envisioned expanding her family right away. Those dreams were abruptly interrupted when she received a breast cancer diagnosis at age 26, merely nine months into her marriage. Facing intensive medical treatment in 2018, Lang took steps to preserve her fertility by freezing her eggs, eventually turning to a close friend who agreed to serve as a gestational surrogate.
In 2023, Lang and her husband, Alex, welcomed their biological daughter, Delaney, into the world. While Lang stepped into the practical role of a mother immediately, the legal reality was far more grueling. Due to a complex and outdated statutory system, it took two full years of legal hurdles, delays, and immense emotional strain before the couple could officially adopt their own biological child.
The legal vulnerabilities surfaced the moment Delaney was born. It required two weeks simply for the Langs to be granted legal guardianship over their newborn. During that interim period, Delaney’s initial birth certificate was issued to the surrogate, formally listing the surrogate and her husband as the legal parents.
This administrative barrier produced significant consequences for the family. Because they lacked recognized legal status at birth, Lang and her husband were unable to make medical decisions for their daughter or enroll her in their healthcare insurance policy until guardianship was finalized. Instead of focusing entirely on bonding with their newborn, the couple spent the day of Delaney's arrival consulting with their attorney.
For Lang, now 34, the two-year journey to finalize Delaney's adoption was marked by persistent roadblocks. She recalled weeping in her office parking lot after receiving updates from her legal counsel informing her of yet another procedural delay, leaving the family desperate for finality and security.
The challenges faced by the Lang family underscore a broader issue affecting numerous households across the country. As more intended parents rely on fertility treatments, gestational carriers, and assisted reproduction to have children, they frequently encounter a fragmented patchwork of state parentage statutes that have failed to keep pace with modern medical science.
Legal advocates emphasize that these statutory gaps pose serious risks to parents and their children. Patience Crozier, the director of family advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, works to update state-level parentage statutes to ensure that all families receive comprehensive legal protections regardless of how their children are conceived.
According to Crozier, countless children across the nation are born through assisted reproductive healthcare, including in vitro fertilization, donor conception, and surrogacy arrangements. She stresses that legal frameworks must clearly secure the bond between these children and their intended parents from the outset.
The absence of immediate, recognized legal parentage creates severe practical complications. Crozier points out that foundational American legal structures tie essential rights directly to the recognized parent-child relationship. Without this status, parents may be blocked from securing medical insurance, accessing parental leave benefits, enrolling their children in academic institutions, or authorizing urgent medical care.
To address these vulnerabilities, legal scholars point to the Uniform Parentage Act, which was updated in 2017 to establish clear standards for children born through surrogacy, IVF, adoption, and within LGBTQ+ families. However, broad adoption remains incomplete, as many states have yet to enact the updated framework or pass equivalent legislation that safeguards these familial arrangements.
Despite the slow pace of reform, Crozier notes that state lawmakers from across the political spectrum are gradually advancing legislative updates. Legislators are increasingly recognizing the necessity of protecting children and witnessing the legal and financial disruptions that occur when statutory protections are missing.
While high-profile legal conflicts around surrogacy occasionally arise, experts emphasize that they do not reflect the standard experience. Crozier explains that the vast majority of surrogacy journeys in the United States proceed cooperatively and smoothly, with disputes representing rare outliers within the broader landscape.
One notable dispute arose in Texas, where a surrogate named West pursued parental rights to make medical decisions for a child, even though the intended parents had maintained custody of the baby boy since birth. Crozier characterized the Texas litigation as an outlier and a politicized tragedy, though one that highlights the necessity of robust parentage laws.
Mariam Shahab, fractional chief marketing officer for The Surrogacy Foundation and a mother who had her son through surrogacy, noted that cases like the one in Texas expose structural weaknesses in the current system. She emphasizes the urgent need for clearer regulations and standardized terminology to ensure the family-building process is safe, legally sound, and emotionally secure for all parties involved.
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