How does the new Gestational Surrogacy Act facilitate having a child through surrogacy?
Before the new law there was no statutory law in Illinois governing surrogacy. As a matter of law the mother is presumed to be the woman out of whose body the child came, and if she is married, her husband is presumed to be the father. In order for the child to legally become the child of the intended parents, an adoption procedure was necessary to terminate the rights of the surrogate, and if she had a husband, to terminate the parental rights of her husband, and also to make the intended parents the legal parents of the child. Under the new Gestational Surrogacy Act documents (fill in forms) are filed with the Illinois Department of Public Health and a birth certificate is issued – all without adoption proceedings. The difficult part before the new law was passed was that ordinarily the surrogate is paid a fee for her services. Adoption judges had difficulty with the fee, because the Adoption Act prohibits “baby buying,” and on its face, it seemed to some judges that surrogacy was ba
