When Rachael Lang got married, she anticipated expanding her household right away. Those dreams were abruptly interrupted when she received a breast cancer diagnosis in 2018 at the age of 26, just nine months after her wedding day. The life-altering medical emergency forced her and her husband, Alex, to pivot their family planning, leading to intensive medical treatments, fertility preservation, and an eventual journey through gestational surrogacy.
Before undergoing cancer therapies, Lang took steps to freeze her eggs in the hopes of one day having biological children. Later, a close friend generously offered to act as a surrogate to carry the couple’s child. In 2023, their long-awaited daughter, Delaney, was finally born. Yet, despite the successful delivery and genetic ties, the state did not immediately acknowledge Lang as the child’s legal mother, sparking a protracted administrative and legal ordeal.
Instead of experiencing a smooth transition into parenthood, the Langs spent the next two years enduring an emotionally draining process simply to establish legal parenthood. Under the governing legal framework, the couple was forced to formally adopt their own biological daughter. The prolonged proceedings involved recurring setbacks, bureaucratic hurdles, and constant frustration that overshadowed the early years of their child's life.
The immediate aftermath of Delaney’s birth highlighted severe institutional disconnects. It took two full weeks following delivery for Lang and her husband to secure basic guardianship over their newborn. During that vulnerable window, the hospital sent Delaney’s official birth certificate directly to the surrogate, formally identifying the surrogate and the surrogate's husband as the newborn's legal parents.
This absence of recognized parental status created dangerous practical limitations for the family. In the hospital, the Langs were legally barred from making urgent medical decisions on behalf of their newborn daughter. Furthermore, they were unable to enroll Delaney under their family health insurance policy until temporary guardianship documentation had been officially processed by the court.
Rather than being able to focus entirely on bonding with their baby during her earliest hours of life, the new parents found themselves consumed by emergency legal consultations. Lang recalled spending the day of Delaney's birth on the phone with attorneys trying to establish basic custodial authority, a task that should have been settled well before the child arrived.
The psychological toll of the two-year journey weighed heavily on the family. Lang, now 34, recalled bursting into tears in her office parking lot after receiving yet another phone call from her attorney informing her that the legal process had faced another procedural delay. The drawn-out adoption process kept the family in an unsettling state of legal uncertainty long after Delaney was brought home.
The challenges experienced by the Lang family reflect widespread systemic problems facing modern families. Increasing numbers of prospective parents turn to assisted reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization, donor conception, and gestational surrogacy, to overcome medical challenges or fertility issues. However, the legal frameworks governing legal parentage in many states have failed to keep pace with these clinical and social developments.
Legal experts emphasize that outdated state policies pose significant risks to both children and parents. Patience Crozier, the director of family advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, works to update state parentage statutes so that every family is afforded comprehensive legal security. Crozier notes that countless children across the country are conceived through fertility healthcare and require unequivocal legal connections to their rearing parents.
The practical ramifications of lacking established parentage extend far into daily life. According to Crozier, legal parentage is foundational in the United States for essential needs such as securing medical coverage, qualifying for family leave, managing school enrollment, and granting informed consent for healthcare procedures. When state laws fail to recognize intended parents from birth, children are left unnecessarily vulnerable.
The complexities surrounding surrogacy agreements have also been spotlighted by high-profile disputes, such as a contested case in Texas involving a surrogate named West. In that dispute, intended parents maintained physical custody of their baby boy from birth, while the surrogate initiated legal action seeking parental rights to direct medical choices for the child.
While legal advocates like Crozier describe the Texas case as a highly politicized tragedy and an extreme outlier compared to the vast majority of surrogacy agreements that conclude smoothly, it highlights the friction that emerges when statutory protections remain ambiguous. Clear legislative standards provide essential safeguards that prevent contractual uncertainty and protect the best interests of the child.
A primary model for statutory modernization is the Uniform Parentage Act, which underwent major revisions in 2017 to address assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and non-traditional family structures. Nevertheless, state-level adoption remains uneven. Many jurisdictions have yet to update their codes to clearly define parentage for children born via IVF, gestational surrogacy, or adoption, leaving families subject to conflicting and archaic rules.
Industry leaders agree that structural reforms are urgently required to eliminate these vulnerabilities. Mariam Shahab, fractional chief marketing officer for The Surrogacy Foundation and a mother through surrogacy herself, stressed that regulatory clarity is vital to making family-building processes safer for everyone involved. She noted that high-profile legal battles illustrate systemic gaps that must be corrected through clearer parentage statutes.
Advocates also point out that the language used in both legal documents and cultural discussions plays a significant role. Outdated terminology, such as referring to gestational carriers as "surrogate mothers," can confuse legal relationships and obscure the reality of the arrangement, reinforcing the need for precise statutory language that accurately reflects the roles of intended parents and surrogates.
Despite ongoing obstacles, there is growing momentum among state lawmakers across the political spectrum to modernize parentage statutes. As advocates continue to educate policymakers on the severe administrative and emotional costs imposed on families like the Langs, bipartisan recognition is expanding around the necessity of protecting parent-child relationships from the moment of birth.
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