SOUTH DAKOTA FAMILIES FOR FERTILITY
For 16 years, career politician Jon Hansen has targeted South Dakota's most vulnerable families
Since first taking office, Jon Hansen has consistently supported legislation that places legal, regulatory, or practical barriers in front of families seeking to grow through IVF, fertility treatment, or surrogacy.
Across more than a decade, his record reflects a consistent approach centered on three areas: limiting surrogacy, increasing government involvement in embryo decisions, and advancing legal definitions that directly affect how IVF works in practice. Each of these areas intersects with the ability of families to have biological children through modern fertility care. Learn more below:
2011 HB 1218 Surrogacy Ban (Failed)
Hansen role: Co-sponsor
What it did: This bill would have significantly restricted surrogacy in South Dakota. It made it a Class 6 felony for healthcare providers to assist with insemination or embryo transfer connected to a surrogacy arrangement. It also made all surrogacy agreements unenforceable and assigned legal parental rights to the birth mother rather than the intended parents.
Direct IVF connection: IVF often results in embryos that require a surrogate to carry the pregnancy. By criminalizing embryo transfer in a surrogacy setting and eliminating enforceable agreements, this bill would have made it nearly impossible for many IVF families to complete the process in South Dakota. Families would have been forced to leave the state or abandon a path to having a biological child.
Hansen Quote: “There are some embryos in storage… families would probably have to go to another state… there are some dire consequences in passing this legislation.”
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/15934.pdf
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/16810.html#page=370
2012 HB 1255 Surrogacy Arrangement Ban (Failed)
Hansen role: Co-sponsor, voted yes
What it did: This bill initially included criminal penalties for those facilitating surrogacy arrangements and allowed a birth mother to assert parental rights after birth. Even after amendment, it still made all surrogacy agreements void and unenforceable.
Direct IVF connection: Creating embryos through IVF is only part of the process for many families. Without enforceable surrogacy agreements, intended parents have no legal certainty that they will retain parental rights to their biological child. This creates a chilling effect on IVF use, because families cannot safely rely on the legal system to recognize them as parents.
Hansen Quotes: “These children are treated as commodities at the expense and exploitation of these women.”, “There are in civilized societies some things that money just can’t buy.”
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/21349.html
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/20220.pdf
2020 HB 1096 Commercial Surrogacy Ban (Failed)
Hansen role: Prime sponsor
What it did: This bill prohibited commercial surrogacy arrangements and created criminal penalties for those involved in facilitating them.
Direct IVF connection: Many IVF families rely on structured surrogacy arrangements that include compensation to ensure medical, legal, and logistical support. Eliminating commercial surrogacy removes the most viable and organized pathway for families who cannot carry a pregnancy themselves. Without this structure, IVF becomes inaccessible for many people who depend on surrogacy to have a biological child.
Hansen Quotes: “Makes a commodity out of mothers and children.”, “You can say ‘I want to buy a baby’ and a little over nine months later a baby will be delivered.”
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/63345.pdf
2021 HB 1248 Embryo Disposal Reporting (Failed)
Hansen role: Prime sponsor
What it did: This bill required reporting on the disposal, destruction, or other disposition of human embryos. It would have created a state-level tracking system for IVF embryos and their outcomes.
Direct IVF connection: IVF requires families to make difficult and deeply personal decisions about embryos, including freezing, transferring, donating, or discarding them. This bill would have required those decisions to be reported to the government. By inserting the state into those decisions, it moves IVF from a private medical process into a regulated and monitored activity, potentially laying the groundwork for future restrictions based on that data.
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/107870.pdf
2021 HB 1114 Redefining Abortion (Passed)
Hansen role: Prime sponsor
What it did: This bill defined abortion as the intentional termination of the life of a human being in the uterus.
Direct IVF connection: IVF pregnancies occasionally involve complex medical decisions, including selective reduction in rare circumstances. This definition places those decisions under abortion law. At the same time, embryos outside the uterus are not covered under this definition, which creates a separate legal category for embryos that could be subject to additional regulation. Together, these changes reshape how IVF-related medical care is treated under the law.
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/104675.pdf
2022 HJR 5003 Life Defined from Fertilization
Hansen role: Supported amendment, voted yes
What it did: This measure proposed defining human life as beginning at fertilization.
Direct IVF connection: IVF works by creating fertilized embryos outside the body. If every fertilized embryo is treated as a legal human being, then the standard practices of IVF come into question. Clinics and families routinely face decisions about embryos that are not viable, not used, or not implanted.
Key implication: Under this framework, the destruction or non-use of embryos could be interpreted as the termination of a human life. That creates a pathway where routine IVF practices could be viewed as abortion, exposing both providers and families to legal risk.
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/129123.pdf
2022 HB 1311 Birth Mother Rights Framework (Failed)
Hansen role: Spoke in support, voted yes
What it did: This bill addressed how a birth mother could terminate parental rights, reinforcing a legal structure where the birth mother holds initial parental authority at the time of birth.
Direct IVF connection: In IVF with surrogacy, the embryo is created from the intended parents’ genetics but carried by a surrogate. Under this framework, the surrogate would be recognized as the legal parent at birth, not the biological parents. This means the biological parents would not automatically have legal rights to their own child. Instead, they would have to go through a legal process after birth to establish those rights.
Why this matters: This creates real risk for families by introducing uncertainty at the moment of birth. It opens the door to disputes, delays, and potential challenges to parental rights. For families using IVF and surrogacy, it undermines one of the most fundamental expectations, that they will be recognized as the parents of their own biological child.
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/132171.pdf
2026 HB 1182 Assisted Reproductive Technology Data Collection (Failed)
Hansen role: Voted yes, his legislative recruit carried the bill (mirrors his bill from 2021)
What it did: This bill required the state to collect detailed data on assisted reproductive technology, including the number of embryos created, implanted, frozen, donated, or destroyed, as well as pregnancy outcomes.
Direct IVF connection: This bill directly regulates IVF by requiring clinics and potentially families to report what happens at every stage of the process. It brings embryo creation and decision-making into a state-controlled data system.
Why this matters: This approach signals more than data collection. It suggests a policy direction where the state is not only tracking IVF practices but also shaping how families are expected to use or not use those technologies.
Sources:
https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/238901.pdf