 Welcome everybody awake So I have very much enjoyed the presentations of the numerous attorneys of various jurisdictions who gave us a very clear idea of their law singular for their country singular in 10 minutes or 20 minutes I have 10 minutes to do 50 different laws because in the United States parentage and how parentages establish new services is uniquely a state governed issue federal government defers the state's laws so every state has a different law unless they've adopted a uniform law or something that is consistent with other states that have passed the same law now Courtney has given a great overview of the use of statutes and the evolution of the law I concur in the distinction between genetic or traditional surrogacy and gestational surrogacy I think the trends that Courtney pointed out were essentially affected or influenced by those distinctions because BPM in 1987 was a genetic or traditional surrogacy case and the court had not had to deal with surrogacy yet and there was no way the court could find under existing law that a woman who gave birth and was the genetic mother and wanted to be the mother who could really have her rights terminated against her will after that case while traditional or surrogacy was involved all of those states passed prohibitive legislation in that time the conversion happened to gestational surrogacy and then in 1993 the California court in a case named Johnson B. Kelver held that a genetic mother who couldn't carry had the tie breaking intent so that she could be awarded parentage and that a non-genetic surrogate would not have parental rights thereafter with the advent of gestational surrogacy and that reasoning from Johnson B. Kelver slowly the momentum gathered and as Courtney pointed out most of the subsequent statute in some form affirmed regulation of compensated surrogacy so that is the trend in the United States. Now the law in the United States that I have to apply as a practitioner starts from many sources one are the state statutes but standing over that is the United States Constitution and our Constitution affects some of our perspective of surrogacy in the United States because we have a bill of rights and we have amendments in 14, 15, 19, and 26 that create a broad panoply of individual liberties and rights and the sense of personal autonomy and individual rights in the United States is very deeply ingrained in the social consciousness and that means people think they have the right to govern their own lives in many ways in many forms. Now one of the rights that has been addressed by our Supreme Court is the right to procreate and in early case law decision the court has said that our 14th amendment does give the fundamental right to procreate a protected status as a fundamental liberty. Now that case didn't deal with procreation through assisted reproduction but it does say that if you want to procreate the government can't intrude or limit that right without strong cause. Now there was a case in Utah about eight years ago in which a statute said that a surrogate would be the parent if a surrogacy was conducted under that state's law exclusive of the genetic mother's right to establish a parentage and the federal court in an unpublished opinion said that's unconstitutional it violates a fundamental liberty to procreate so in that initial case the first time a federal court's looked at it they affirm the fact that the fundamental right to procreate includes surrogacy at least it shows that the courts can cobble together an argument that that's the case so that means that surrogacy essentially has a legal standing or leg up in the United States that it may not have in other places now that state sovereignty that set forth in the 10th amendment of the constitution means there is no federal regulation all of the state laws are different the processes are different the types of surrogacies are different as Courtney said there are three general categories of states we have a statute permissive or prohibitive or we have case law without a statute in some states that affirm or restrict or we have no law at all so those practitioners in other countries that have their parents coming to the united states are going to have parents that come back with a variety of documentation california issues a pre-birth order which is a judgment which sometimes has difficulty even being accepted by the vital statistics departments in other states so what the effect of that pre-birth order is as opposed to a post-birth judgment in a process that includes adoption is different in illinois it's an administrative process based on affidavits from the attorneys that give vital records permission to issue a birth certificate in the parents names and establish them as technically or essentially administratively as legal parents what kind of process goes on in the individual state is critical when they return and how it may or may not be recognized in the home country so understand that that affects the the view of what you as other attorneys are talking to your clients about and going to the united states they have to understand that legal landscape now in terms of the similarities however whether you get a pre-birth order an administrative order or some sort of judicial judgment after birth in the united states every servicing is subject to some sort of legislative structure and requirements and compliance toward judicial oversight of some sort of intervention the judge will look at the papers a judge will have the parties in court something is being done to ensure the due process of the parties and i think that may be a very important reason why the process in the united states is so reliable in addition among the united states all of the orders of any individual state are entitled to full faith and credit in all the states outside the state that issues the order so we are used to an idea that even if a state issues an order and enters a parentage order in one state a state that has a different policy must still respect that in our minds that supports a process of international comedy so that orders issued in the united states with appropriate due process could or should be entitled to recognition in their own countries and that may be one of the elements that goes forward in the commission report and dealing with international surrogacy etc so in terms of the legal process there is no single legal process in california with very few restrictions you submit documents without court of parents they judge science and order upon birth the parents are the parents diversify the issues and they have legal authority in illinois the parties are represented by independent counsel they follow the statute the attorneys submit their affidavits at the end of the process and parentages is essentially established in minnesota where i practice there's no law so what do i have to do if i have a gay couple or a couple where the mother can't provide the egg and i have a father who's the genetic father i have to use laws that were established in 1983 to make them their parents so first in order to do this efficiently and send them home in three weeks i have to establish the genetic father as the father that's a paternity statute under 257 minnesota statutes if i get a birth certificate at that point it has the surrogate and the genetic father on it then i do a voluntary termination of the surrogate's parental rights that's under chapter 261 if i get a birth certificate after that it has just the genetic father on it then i do a step-turn adoption under chapter 289 and if i get a birth certificate after that it has both parents on it but they've gone through three statutory chapters three different legal proceedings and a complexity that shouldn't exist but that is the spectrum of how it's done in the united states i can't give you one law and i can't give you one process what i can say is that everybody that has established their parentage in the united states from any country has gone through a process that very likely and certainly has afforded everyone to process and protected the rights of the hearts that's the end of my 10 minutes so i'm going to sit down