We Graded All 50 States on Child Protection. Only One Got an A.
See where your state lands with our children's rights scorecard
Every child who has ever lost a parent to divorce, been created by an anonymous sperm donor, or been handed to strangers at birth through a surrogacy arrangement knows something the rest of us too easily forget: family law is not abstract. It lands on real children. It shapes real lives.
For years at Them Before Us, we have seen state legislatures, courts, and administrative offices quietly rewrite the rules of family formation, one bill, one ruling, one Vital Records update at a time. They erased the words “mother” and “father” from parentage statutes. They handed adults the right to commission a child without a background check. They made it perfectly legal to pay someone to relinquish their parental rights and walk away from the child they created.
The children didn’t get a vote.
We just graded all 50 states and the District of Columbia on how well their laws protect children’s rights, and we’re publishing every single score.
Why a scorecard?
Because what gets measured gets addressed.
For too long, these legal shifts have moved below the radar of everyone except the lobbyists and advocacy groups who engineered them. Most parents have no idea that their state may have replaced “mother” and “father” with gender-neutral substitutes. Most citizens don’t know that nearly one in three surrogate pregnancies in the U.S. is commissioned by foreign nationals, or that their state may have no limits on how many families one sperm donor can create children for.
The Children’s Rights Scorecard changes that. It puts the information in your hands, in plain language, with a letter grade that cuts through the legal fog.
We graded states across four categories:
Parentage law. Has your state erased mothers and fathers from family law? Can an adult gain full parental rights over a child with no biological connection and without passing an adoption screening, simply by declaring “intent” to parent? Can a court assign more than two legal parents to one child?
Surrogacy. Does your state allow children to be commissioned, carried to term, and handed over for money? Are those arrangements given a pre-birth court order, placing the commissioning adults’ names on the birth certificate before the child even draws a first breath?
Donor conception and IVF. Can “donor” parents be paid to relinquish their rights? Do donor-conceived children have any right to know who their biological parent is? Are there any limits to how many children one donor can create?
Marriage and divorce law. Does your state still recognize that the union of one man and one woman is uniquely protective for children? Are there waiting periods before a divorce is finalized? Are divorcing parents ever required to consider what the family breakup means for their kids?
Every single one of these is a child welfare question, not a political or culture war question. Uniting to protect the rights of children could be a bipartisan issue across our country
The results are sobering and also clarifying.
Nebraska scored the highest in the nation with an A-. Washington, D.C. received the lowest with an F. Nearly two-thirds of all states received a C or worse.
If you live in a conservative state and your state didn’t score as well as you expected, you’re not alone in that surprise. This scorecard is not a partisan report card. It is a children’s rights report card. Many red states have quietly adopted practices that put adults first, because no one was watching closely enough, and no one made it easy to see the full picture until now.
Each grade is an invitation to join the work of protecting children.
Bonus: The Daily Signal published an exclusive on our project; check it out here.
To everyone already fighting for kids: thank you.
We present this scorecard as a compass, not a condemnation.
Family policy organizations, legislators, advocates, and pastors who have been working for years in their states to protect children and strengthen families, your work shows up in this data. Every state that still uses mother-father language, every state that bans surrogacy contracts, every state with meaningful divorce waiting periods, those didn’t happen by accident. They happened because someone fought for them.
If your state got a good grade, that’s a reason to celebrate the work that’s been done, and to redouble it, because scores can go down just as fast as they go up.
If your state got a poor grade, that is a roadmap. The scorecard doesn’t just tell you where kids are failing. It shows you exactly what laws would need to change, and points to states whose statutes can serve as a model.
What we’re asking you to do right now
Go look up your state. Visit the site, click on your state, read the grade, and read why.
Share it. Send it to your friends, your family, your small group, your neighbors. Ask them: did you know this about our state? Most people don’t. That’s the whole point of getting it in front of them.
Take it to your legislators. This scorecard was built to be a tool for exactly that. It identifies specific, achievable reforms. It names model statutes from other states. Our team is ready to support anyone who wants to carry this work forward legislatively. Use the contact form at the site.
Keep advocating. The children we’re fighting for cannot yet speak for themselves in the halls of government. They are counting on the rest of us to show up.
A just society protects the most vulnerable. Right now, across this country, children are the most vulnerable, and most of them don’t even know what is being decided about them.
Work like this requires people willing to fund it. If you believe children deserve someone in their corner, someone who will do the research, build the tools, and put real evidence in the hands of people who are ready to act, you’re exactly who we’re talking to.
This movement is growing. Across the country, ordinary adults are doing hard things for children who cannot do them for themselves. We hope you join us.
Give today to help defend children.
Them Before Us is a global movement committed to defending children’s right to their mother and father. We believe that adult desires should never come at the expense of a child’s fundamental needs.
We are not professional lobbyists or political insiders. We are ordinary people with an extraordinary conviction: children must come first in every conversation about marriage, family, and fertility. We exist to make one thing clear: when adults sacrifice for children, society thrives. When children are forced to sacrifice for adults, everyone pays the price.
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This is too sad. Children’s rights are also human rights!! Thank you for sharing this.
Grew up in IL, lived in WI for a while and now in IN. Unintentionally moving up!