Mr. Richard Vaughn:

I sincerely thank the distinguished committee members for the invitation to be here today. It is both an honour and a privilege. The committee is on the verge of doing something quite remarkable, miraculous really. In a world that repeatedly numbs us with news of senseless violence, crime and war, members are exploring whether to acknowledge the love of people who in their hearts so deeply want to build a family that they are willing to go to tremendous expense, time, and effort, working with a team of doctors, lawyers, psychologists and the courts just to have a child. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and in this context, it quite literally does. If Ireland is to allow surrogacy, then sensible regulations and requirements for the safety of all the participants and the resulting children will be very important, of course. However at the very core of the matter, the committee's work is about family, love, and children.

I am here today to offer what I can to support the committee in its comparative examination of surrogacy regulations in other jurisdictions, in this case the United States, where surrogacy in some form has been allowed, increasingly so, since the 1980s. I imagine the members have a lot of interesting questions for me, and to answer them I will draw on my experience. First and foremost, I will draw on my experience as a father through assisted reproduction. I have two children through surrogacy, and without this experience I would not be an assisted reproduction attorney. I will draw on my experience as an attorney as well, licensed for almost 30 years, and having practised exclusively assisted reproductive technology, ART, law, since 2006. My law firm, International Fertility Law Group, based in Los Angeles and with origins back to 1992, has handled more than 30,000 assisted reproduction matters of which I have been directly involved in more than 16,000. I am personally licensed in California, New York, and Illinois, although my law firm handles assisted reproduction matters nationwide. We have had cases in practically every state in the US.

I can attest that the desire to engage in family building through surrogacy has been steadily growing every year since it first became possible. There are many reasons for this, but among them are that technological advances in assisted reproductive medicine have led to increased success rates and safety, while assisted reproduction laws in the US have matured and evolved to better protect all participants in the process.

I will also draw on my experience: as an advocate. In addition to being an attorney, I am the immediate past chair of the American Bar Association, ABA, family law section’s assisted reproduction law committee where, during my tenure as chair, I helped pass the ABA-approved Model Act Governing Assisted Reproductive Technologies, the ABA Model Act governing ART providers, ABA-approved recommendations to the US State Department for international surrogacy and parentage, and ABA-approved guidelines for the transmission of US citizenship to children born abroad to US-citizen intended parents. I remain active the family law section and ART committee today and, through the ABA, I have produced continuing legal education and training for assisted reproduction lawyers and family lawyers on a state, national and international level for more than 14 years.

I have served on the national board of the American Fertility Association, and I am active member of the American Academy of Adoption and ART Attorneys, AAAA, the Academy of California Adoption and ART Lawyers, ACAL, the California Bar Association, CBA, and its family law section, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, ASRM, legal professionals group, among others. In addition to co-authoring an ABA book on developing an ART law practice for lawyers, I have been published in numerous professional journals. I have also presented at numerous legal and family-building conferences around the US and the world, including the International Academy of Family Law surrogacy symposium in 2015, the Cambridge University international surrogacy forum 2019, Yale University School of Law, the California Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association. I have also served as a fertility law expert in numerous television, radio and print media.

Before I conclude, I would like to provide a brief overview of surrogacy law in the US. In the US, surrogacy is not regulated at the federal level. Family law is a matter for the states to regulate. At present approximately one third of the states have relatively comprehensive legislation addressing surrogacy. We also have the Uniform Parentage Act, UPA, which is promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission and is updated every few years as needed. The most recent version of the UPA addresses surrogacy more comprehensively than ever before and tracks with the American Bar Association Model Act governing ART, passed during my tenure as chair. The individual states are not required, but are allowed, to adopt the UPA and the ABA Model Acts and-or to borrow from them. Different states have adopted different versions of the UPA over the years. There are states with older versions, states with newer versions and states that have never adopted a version of the UPA or borrowed from the ABA Model Act. As a result, there is a bit of a patchwork of surrogacy laws where these states are concerned.

There are some states with only judicial law, or case law, addressing surrogacy, some with only statutory treatment, and some with both case law and statutory law. There are also states with nothing on the books, where surrogacy is in effect allowed because it is not prohibited. A few states restrict surrogacy to altruistic surrogacy and some allow access to surrogacy only to US citizens or residents but, by and large, most US states allow rather than prohibit surrogacy. Court orders of parentage are required in all but two states. Two states have administrative parentage procedures but also allow court orders where needed, such as for international intended parents. Most states allow parentage orders to be entered pre-birth. Some of these allow or require an additional post-birth order, and a handful of states allow only a post-birth order of parentage.

The states that allow surrogacy, whether by regulation, case law or a combination, tend to follow a pattern of requirements for the participants, establishing basic requirements for surrogacy agreements, and allow the courts to establish the paperwork and procedures required for granting parental orders.

The states that allow surrogacy are increasingly establishing basic and sensible requirements for the intending parents and the surrogate. Examples are that the surrogate be over 21 years; have children of her own; not be on public welfare; pass a criminal background check; obtain psychological counselling and undergo psychological evaluation; obtain medical counselling and medical clearance; and obtain independent legal advice. These are all at the expense of the intended parents. Examples of intended parent eligibility requirements are that the intended parents be over 21 years; be psychologically cleared; obtain medical counselling and evaluation; and receive independent legal advice.

Most of the recent legislative treatment of surrogacy explicitly codifies best practices that have evolved over the years, including, among others, a requirement that the surrogate make all health and welfare decisions that affect her body, life and health, and that she selects her obstetrician and delivery hospital; a requirement that the surrogate have health insurance, which should be reviewed and approved for the surrogacy, life insurance for the duration of the arrangement, and sometimes these requirements set the parameters for how long these coverages should be in place; and a requirement is that escrow accounts be set up for the security of the funds needed for the process, including the payment of any uncovered medical bills, and sometimes these statutes set the parameters for how long these accounts should be in place.

While it may seem that the US has a complicated matrix of surrogacy laws across the states, there is a general pattern to most of it that supports procreative freedom while protecting the integrity of the

Anything that I can personally do to help make this possible, and safe, in Ireland and other places in the world is truly an honour. I conclude my remarks and will humbly attempt to assist the members with their questions.