Here is NAFG’s take: it seems to us that there is a focus on the gay community as beneficiaries of lifting the ban on commercial surrogacy. This is an important constituency, to be sure, and one we have helped for years. However, the legislators most sensitive to their plight are likely already in favor of the proposed legislation. A visit by Andy Cohen is not going to move the needle.
A smarter move might be to make a direct appeal to those upstate and/or Republican legislators who may respond more favorably to other types of families affected by fertility issues and helped by surrogate mother assistance. Seems as if picking off some of those votes would do a lot to help ensure passage of this bill. How about sharing stories of the Albany area woman with a cardiac condition which makes pregnancy dangerous? The Rochester breast cancer survivor who now has a newborn thanks to a gestational carrier [in another state]? The Syracuse couple who endured nine miscarriages and are at the end of their rope?
And some comparison to other states and what is permissible is also important – does everybody really know that compensated surrogacy is fairly commonplace and accepted in Georgia, Texas and Ohio?? States where other aspects of reproductive choice [significant restrictions on abortion] are being curtailed in the most draconian ways.
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