By Reps. Dan Miller, Ben Sanchez, Jeanne McNeill and Sheryl Delozier

In the lead-up to having a child, many families make important preparations: taking parenting classes and reading parenting books, choosing medical professionals and lining up a pediatrician, even painting the nursery and getting everything ready for the child’s arrival.

But for some families in Pennsylvania, there is a lot of additional legwork that continues well after the child’s birth. Some families are forced to pursue what are known as “confirmatory adoptions” for their children, just to secure parental rights; these can involve court hearings, burdensome legal documentation, background checks, and other clearances if they’ve lived in other states. The process can cost thousands of dollars and take months to complete.

Some families are forced to endure these additional steps because of Pennsylvania’s outdated parentage laws. It’s well past time that we update these laws to better reflect the range of parenting relationships that Pennsylvanians hold – and to protect more families, getting everyone on the same footing.

That’s why we’ve introduced the Uniform Parentage Act again this year. The bill, H.B. 350, passed the Pennsylvania House of Representatives last year with strong bipartisan support but, unfortunately, the session ended before the Senate had a chance to consider it.

Now, in 2025, we need to get this legislation across the finish line so that our state’s courts have a clear legal framework protecting the rights of all families. Families in Pennsylvania, including those formed in part through assisted reproduction like IVF and surrogacy, deserve clear guidelines on how to legally establish a parent-child relationship.

In addition to providing an option for a voluntary acknowledgement of parentage, which can be done prior to birth in a straightforward process at no cost to the parents, the UPA would introduce new, strong protections for people involved in surrogacy agreements. It’s a commonsense policy that reflects best practices and takes into account the technological developments that have allowed so many Pennsylvania families to build loving families that make our state great.

Without the UPA, children and families will continue to suffer in the Keystone State because they’ll continue to fall through the cracks in our legal framework. There are many protections and responsibilities that flow from legal parentage – medical decision making, access to benefits, health insurance, child support, and more.

Modernized parentage laws also ensure that if something happens to a parent – including death, separation, or divorce – the relationship between the parents and their children endure.

For children, a legal parent-child relationship is central to stability, security and overall well-being – and they deserve to have that clarity on the day they are born, not months or years later.

In this Commonwealth, families come in all shapes and sizes. Our laws need to provide security and protection for all of them. We have the solution for this problem – the Uniform Parentage Act – and now, it’s up to all of us to get to work and get it passed.

Rep. Dan Miller is a D-Allegheny, Rep. Ben Sanchez is a D-Montgomery, Rep. Jeanne McNeill is a D-Lehigh, Rep. Sheryl Delozier is an R-Cumberland.