Sanchez bill modernizing Pennsylvania’s parentage laws passes House
Rep. Ben Sanchez June 23, 2025 | 3:34 PM
HARRISBURG, June 23 – Bipartisan legislation introduced by state Rep. Ben Sanchez that would establish the state’s Uniform Parentage Act to clarify the parent-child relationship, which is critical to the establishment of stable Pennsylvania families and promotes consistency in the courts, passed the House today.
House Bill 350, which Sanchez introduced with Reps. Sheryl Delozier, R-Cumberland, Jeanne McNeill, D-Lehigh, and Dan Miller, D-Allegheny, provides necessary legal framework on establishing parentage, including for families who require assisted reproductive health care, like surrogacy, to have children. Sanchez noted that these children have no clear path to establish a secure legal tie to their parents under Pennsylvania’s current laws. This gap has given rise to a county-by-county patchwork of laws that have created stress and uncertainty for children and families.
The bill seeks to rectify this by ensuring equal protections and full rights for all children and their parents, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. The bill would also provide robust protections for all parties involved in surrogacy agreements, including children, parents and surrogates.
“Children need a secure and legal parent-child relationship for so many aspects of their overall well-being, and this bill will provide the stability that fulfills that need,” Sanchez, D-Montgomery, said. “This relationship is essential for medical insurance coverage, decision-making regarding medical care and education, financial support, custody and visitation time, along with protecting the emotional wellness of children from protracted and harmful litigation.”
The UPA was originally promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission in 1973 and revised several times since. While a majority of states have parentage laws that are based on some version of the UPA, Pennsylvania is not one of them. In fact, Pennsylvania currently has no statutory authority for the determination of parentage for children born through the use of assisted reproduction at all. The enactment of H.B. 350 would change that by providing parents, lawyers and courts with clarity on how to establish the critical legal relationship between parent and child.
An identical version of this bill passed the House last year, but the 2023-24 legislative session concluded before it could be taken up by the Senate. The new bill, which has bipartisan and broad stakeholder support, has again been sent to the Senate for consideration.