February 2, 2011 New york Times By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE CASCADE, Md. — When Laurie Shifler was expecting her eighth child, she was so upset about a local hospital’s new policy restricting photographs of births that she started an online petition. Hundreds of people, near and far, signed it, many expressing outrage that a hospital would prevent parents from recording such a momentous occasion, one that could never be recaptured. The hospital,...

Boston, Massachusetts January 7, 2011 — In an unprecedented decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that two gay men could be recognized as legal parents on the birth certificate of their twins born through surrogacy. This is the first time in U.S. history that a state high court has acknowledged the parentage of two men while stating the relevant statute “confer(s) parental status on an intended parent who is a party to a valid gestational...

By Andrew Vorzimer ⋅ September 17, 2010 ⋅ A very disconcerting decision out of Valencia, Spain whose ramifications might be broader than originally reported: The twins were born legally to a surrogate mother in the United States The judge in First Instance Court 15 in Valencia has decided to annul the entry made in the Consular Civil Registry in Los Angeles, by a Spanish gay male married couple who were registered as the parents of twins. The...

By Candace Chellew-Hodge – 6.21.10 When President Obama issued his statement this past weekend in recognition of Father’s Day, he mentioned one class of fathers that no other president before him has acknowledged: gay dads. Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian. His acknowledgement of the labor of love two...

June 16, 2010 Television Review | ‘Google Baby’   By GINIA BELLAFANTE   Way back when, during the final decades of the last century, if a woman had a hard time conceiving, she saved her dollars by the tens of thousands and passed them over to a clinic specializing in assisted reproductive technology. She might then shoot herself with stimulants and have her eggs retrieved, fertilized and implanted, hoping that science and the gods of...

By Tomer Zarchin – May 18, 2010 www.haaretz.com – There are no legal obstacles to a paternity test that would establish whether Dan Goldberg is indeed the father of twins Itai and Liron, the Jerusalem District Attorney’s office informed Family Court judge Philip Marcus yesterday. The statement came in response to a request by Marcus for the district attorney and the twins’ court-appointed guardian to clarify their position...

by  Michael Jensen – AfterElton.com Kevin and Scotty are doing it on Brothers & Sisters while Ricky Martin did it in real life. Now CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien is doing an In America documentary on the phenomenon of gay men having babies via surrogacy. Titled Gary & Tony Have a Baby and airing in June, the two-hour special follows Gary and Tony, two life-long gay activists, on their quest to have a biological child of their...

May 4, 2010 - New York Times – By JEREMY W. PETERS ALBANY — New York State’s highest court somewhat expanded the rights of gay and lesbian parents on Tuesday in a narrow ruling that said nonbiological parents in same-sex relationships should be treated the same as biological parents. But the high court, the Court of Appeals, declined to resolve two cases involving lesbian parents and instead sent both back to lower courts, saying that...

May 4, 2010 By Anthony M. Brown, Esq. The New York Court of Appeals issued their ruling today on what had been considered to be a potentially landmark case, Debra H. v. Janice R.  In their ruling, the court allowed the plaintiff, Debra H., access to her non-biological child with whom she had been denied visitation from the biological mother, Janice R.  That sounds great, right?  Wrong. In doing so, the court allowed to stand the precedent  notion...

By Evan Pondel – MinnPost.com, 4.21.10 TEL AVIV, Israel — At an age when most people are welcoming their first grandchildren into the world, Avishay Greenfield, 59, gets little sleep as a father of twin babies. For Greenfield, it is a dream come true after waiting several decades to have children with his partner. But this later-in-life scenario isn’t only a function of family dynamics and finances. In the last several years, the coming...