Same Sex Parenting: OK Supreme Court Landmark Ruling

Same Sex Parenting Wins Increased Rights in Oklahoma

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a landmark ruling same sex parenting increasing the rights of noncustodial parents who have been in same-sex relationships. The decision acknowledged the rights of a non-biological parent in a same-sex relationship who has acted as a parent.

The state’s high court ruled that an Oklahoma County judge improperly dismissed the case of Oklahoma City resident Charlene Ramey. The court reversed that decision and remanded the case for further proceedings so Ramey could pursue a hearing on custody and visitation of the child, who was born in 2005. Ramey was in a same-sex relationship with Kimberly Sutton. At the time of the relationship, Oklahoma did not recognize same-sex marriages, which changed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year not to take up an appeal of Oklahoma’s marriage-equality lawsuit ruling.

The couple agreed to have a child, born by Sutton with a donor. Sutton and Ramey later separated after almost 10 years of same sex parenting, as co-parents. Sutton denied Ramey’s status as a parent and sought to end all interaction between Ramey and the child, according to the opinion.

“Ramey, the plaintiff, is not a mere ‘third party’ like a nanny, friend, or relative, as suggested by the district court,” the ruling states. “On the contrary, Ramey has been intimately involved in the conception, birth and parenting of their child, at the request and invitation of Sutton. Ramey has stood in the most sacred role as parent to their child and always been referred to as ‘mom’ by their child.”

The decision is intended to recognize same-sex couples who, prior to the U.S. Supreme Court legalization of same-sex marriage, entered into committed relationships, engaged in family planning with the intent to parent jointly and share those responsibilities, the ruling states.

“Public policy dictates that the district court consider the best interests of the child and extend standing to the non-biological parent to pursue hearings on custody and visitation,” the ruling says.

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by Barbara Hoberock, November 18, 2015 TulsaWorld.com

in Adoption / In the News / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Lesbian Couple to Keep Foster Child Utah Judge Shifts Ruling

Utah Judge Reverses Ruling in Favor of Lesbian Couple

A Utah judge on Friday reversed his order to take a foster child away from a lesbian couple because of their sexual orientation, state officials said. The judge, Scott N. Johansen of Juvenile Court, had issued an order on Tuesday saying that the child, a 9-month-old girl, had to be removed from the home of a lesbian couple by the end of the day next Tuesday, and placed with a heterosexual couple.

The foster parents, Rebecca A. Peirce, 34, and April M. Hoagland, 38, and the state Division of Child and Family Services, both filed motions Thursday asking the judge to reconsider, and said they were prepared to appeal his decision. The couple, who are married, lives in Price, southwest of Salt Lake City.A Utah judge on Friday reversed his order to take a foster child away from a lesbian couple because of their sexual orientation

The clash is the first of its kind, said Ashley Sumner, a spokeswoman for the state agency, because Utah only recently began approving foster child placements with same-sex couples, after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on gay marriage in June.

Under fire from critics including gay rights activists and the state’s Republican governor, a judge in Utah on Friday reversed, at least temporarily, his order that a foster child be taken away from a lesbian couple because it was “not in the best interest of children to be raised by same-sex couples.”

While the child may remain with the couple for the moment, Judge Scott N. Johansen signaled that the matter might not be settled. He continued to question the placement of children with same-sex parents, a matter that will be taken up at a Dec. 4 hearing on what is in the best interests of this child, a 9-month-old girl.

The judge’s actions, coming after the Supreme Court this year established a right to same-sex marriage, put him at the center of another front in the nation’s legal and culture wars: the question of whether gay men and women can get, and keep, custody of children under various circumstances.

in Adoption / Ethics / Foster / Foster Care / In the News  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Infertility? Could a Uterus Transplant Help?

ethicsUterus Transplants May Soon Help Some U.S. Women Struggling With Infertility Become Pregnant

Infertility affects millions of women worldwide and in Cleveland within the next few months, surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic expect to become the first in the United States to transplant a uterus into a woman who lacks one, so that she can become pregnant and give birth.

Six doctors swarmed around the body of the deceased organ donor and quickly started to operate. The kidneys came out first. Then the team began another delicate dissection, to remove an organ that is rarely, if ever, taken from a donor. Ninety minutes later they had it, resting in the palm of a surgeon’s hand: the uterus.

The operation was a practice run. The recipients will be women who were born without a uterus, had it removed or have uterine damage. The transplants will be temporary: The uterus would be removed after the recipient has had one or two babies, so she can stop taking transplant anti-rejection drugs.

Uterine transplantation is a new frontier, one that pairs specialists from two fields known for innovation and for pushing limits, medically and ethically — reproductive medicine and transplant surgery. If the procedure works, many women could benefit: An estimated 50,000 women in the United States might be candidates. But there are potential dangers.

The recipients, healthy women, will face the risks of surgery and anti-rejection drugs for a transplant that they, unlike someone with heart or liver failure, do not need to save their lives. Their pregnancies will be considered high-risk, with fetuses exposed to anti-rejection drugs and developing inside a womb taken from a dead woman.

Eight women from around the country have begun the screening process at the Cleveland Clinic, hoping to be selected for transplants. One, a 26-year-old with two adopted children, said she still wanted a chance to become pregnant and give birth.

“I crave that experience,” she said. “I want the morning sickness, the backaches, the feet swelling. I want to feel the baby move. That is something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember.”

She traveled more than 1,000 miles to the clinic, paying her own way. She asked that her name and hometown be withheld to protect her family’s privacy.

She was 16 when medical tests, performed because she had not begun menstruating, found that she had ovaries but no uterus — a syndrome that affects about one in 4,500 newborn girls. She comes from a large family, she said, and always assumed that she would have children. The test results were devastating.

Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis, the driving force behind the project, said, “There are women who won’t adopt or have surrogates, for reasons that are personal, cultural or religious.” Dr. Tzakis is the director of solid organ transplant surgery at a Cleveland Clinic hospital in Weston, Fla. “These women know exactly what this is about,” he said. “They’re informed of the risks and benefits. They have a lot of time to think about it, and think about it again. Our job is to make it as safe and successful as possible.”

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New York Times, by Denise Grady – November 12, 2015

in Ethics / In the News / Science  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

LGBT Advocates Outraged at Utah Judge

LGBT Advocates Outcry: Rights Violation!

Utah Judge Takes Foster Child From Couple Because They’re Lesbians

LGBT advocates and even Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were outraged and April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce of Carbon County, Utah, were stunned when Judge Scott Johansen ordered their foster child removed from their home. The judge said the baby would be better off with heterosexual parents.

The couple, who legally wed in October 2014, have taken care of the 1-year-old girl for three months, and her birth mother has asked them to adopt the child. The Utah Division of Child and Family Services has been forced to find new housing for the child, but officials say they will appeal the judge’s decision.

utah-lesbians

“We love her and she loves us, and we haven’t done anything wrong,” Peirce told the Salt Lake Tribune. “And the law, as I understand it, reads that any legally married couple can foster and adopt.”

Attorneys for DCFS are currently reviewing the decision. “If we feel like [Johansen’s] decision is not best for the child, and we have a recourse to appeal or change it, we’re going to do that,” DCFS director Brent Platt said. “For us, it’s what’s best for the child.”

“Any loving couple if they are legally married, and meet the requirements, we want them to be involved,” he added.

The child’s state-appointed attorney supports the couple. The birth mother’s lawyer, who was in court with the couple when the decision was handed down, has said the mother is upset and wants her baby to stay with the women.

Judge Johansen, who the Tribune reported has repeatedly been reprimanded by the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission for “demeaning the judicial office,” claimed to have research proving children are better off when raised by heterosexual parents. In reality, all credible major studies show that a parent’s sexual orientation has no effect on a child’s social development and mental health.

Click here to read the entire article.

Advocate.com, November 12, 2015 by Bill Browning

in Adoption / Ethics / Foster / Foster Care / Foster Parenting / In the News / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

An Edited Gene In A Couple of Days?

 An Edited Gene In A Couple of Days?

One day in March 2011, Emmanuelle Charpentier, a geneticist who was studying flesh-eating bacteria, approached Jennifer Doudna, an award-winning scientist, at a microbiology conference in Puerto Rico. Charpentier, a more junior researcher, hoped to persuade Doudna, the head of a formidably large lab at the University of California, Berkeley, to collaborate. While walking the cobblestone streets of Old San Juan, the two women fell to talking. Charpentier had recently grown interested in a particular gene, known as Crispr, that seemed to help flesh-eating bacteria fight off invasive viruses. By understanding that gene, as well as the protein that enabled it, called Cas9, Charpentier hoped to find a way to cure patients infected with the bacteria by stripping it of its protective immune system.

Among scientists, Doudna is known for her painstaking attention to detail, which she often harnesses to solve problems that other researchers have dismissed as intractable. Charpentier, who is French but works in Sweden and Germany, is livelier and more excitable. But as the pair began discussing the details of the experiment, they quickly hit it off. ‘‘I really liked Emmanuelle,’’ Doudna says. ‘‘I liked her intensity. I can get that way, too, when I’m really focused on a problem. It made me feel that she was a like-minded person.’’

At the time, bacteria were thought to have only a rudimentary immune system, which simply attacked anything unfamiliar on sight. But researchers speculated that Crispr, which stored fragments of virus DNA in serial compartments, might actually be part of a human-style immune system: one that keeps records of past diseases in order to repel them when they reappear. ‘‘That was what was so intriguing,’’ Doudna says. ‘‘What if bacteria have a way to keep track of previous infections, like people do? It was this radical idea.’’

The Crispr Quandary – Is Genetic Engineering Here?

The other thing that made Crispr-Cas9 tantalizing was its ability to direct its protein, Cas9, to precisely snip out a piece of DNA at any point within the genome and then neatly stitch the ends back together. Such effortless editing had a deep appeal: In the lab, the process remained cumbersome. At the time, though, Doudna didn’t think much about Crispr’s potential as a gene-editing tool. Researchers had stumbled on such systems in the past, but struggled to harness them. Nonetheless, she says: ‘‘I had this feeling. You know when you pick up a suspense novel, and read the first chapter, and you get a little chill, and you know, ‘Oh, this is going to be good’? It was like that.’’

Doudna arranged for a postdoctoral researcher, Martin Jinek, to collaborate with Charpentier’s team. After months of experimentation, they determined that Crispr relied on two separate kinds of RNA: a guide, which targeted the Cas9 protein to a particular location, and a tracer, which enabled the protein to cut the DNA. But even then, it wasn’t clear whether Crispr was anything more than a curiosity. Unlike most living things — people, animals, plants — the cells of bacteria have no nucleus, and their RNA and DNA interact in a different way. Because of that, Jinek says, it was hard to say ‘‘whether the system would be portable’’ — whether it would work in anything except bacteria. Going over the problem in Doudna’s office, Jinek began sketching the two RNA molecules on the whiteboard. In their natural form, the two are separate, but Doudna and Jinek believed that it would be possible to combine them into a single tool — one that was more likely to work in a wide range of organisms. ‘‘That was the moment the project went from being ‘This is cool, this is wonky’ to ‘Whoa, this could be transformative,’ ’’ Doudna says.

The tool Doudna ultimately created with her collaborators paired Crispr’s programmable guide RNA with a shortened tracer RNA. Used in combination, the system allowed researchers to target and excise any gene they wanted — or even edit out a single base pair within a gene. (When researchers want to add a gene, they can use Crispr to stitch it between the two cut ends.) Some researchers have compared Crispr to a word processor, capable of effortlessly editing a gene down to the level of a single letter.

Even more surprising was how easy the system was to use. To edit a gene, a scientist simply had to take a strand of guide RNA and include an ‘‘address’’: a short string of letters corresponding to a particular location on the gene. The process was so straightforward, one scientist told me, that a grad student could master it in an hour, and produce an edited gene within a couple of days. ‘‘In the past, it was a student’s entire Ph.D. thesis to change one gene,’’ says Bruce Conklin, a geneticist at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. ‘‘Crispr just knocked that out of the park.’’

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New York Times – by Jennifer Kahn, November 9, 2015

in Ethics / Science  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Colombia’s Gay Adoptions Ruling

Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruling found that barring gay adoptions had deprived children of the right to be raised by families.

In a landmark gay adoptions ruling that eliminated a glaringly discriminatory policy, Colombia’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that gay individuals and couples may adopt children. In a 6-to-2 decision, the Constitutional Court found that barring gay people from adopting had unreasonably deprived children of the right to be raised by families.

The decision was the latest victory for gay activists in Colombia who have challenged discriminatory policies in a string of smartly litigated cases. The ruling will make it easier for gay individuals and couples to adopt children in state foster care. It also will allow people to be legally recognized as the parent of a same-sex partner’s biological child.

Anticipating criticism from political and religious leaders, the justices wrote that “doubts and fears about whether society is ready to accept this decision won’t be dissipated by being blind to an irrefutable reality.” The judges argued that there was no evidence that same-sex couples were unfit parents and no compelling reason to bar them from the universe of potential adoptive families.

Wednesday’s decision sparked criticism from Catholic Church leaders, who argued that the issue should have been decided by Congress or approved in a referendum. While some Colombian lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to expand the rights of gay people, those initiatives have stalled. The country’s top court has picked up the slack. In doing so, it has set a commendable example in a region where gay people continue to face widespread discrimination and scorn.

Click here to read the entire article.

A version of this editorial appears in print on November 10, 2015, in The International New York Times. Today’s Paper|Subscribe

 

New York Times, November 9, 2015

in Adoption / In the News / International / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Mormons in Same Sex Marriages & Children Banned

Same Sex Marriages & Children Banned

Children of same sex marriages will not be able to join the Mormon Church until they turn 18 — and only if they move out of their parents’ homes, disavow all same-sex relationships and receive approval from the church’s top leadership as part of a new policy adopted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In addition, Mormons in Mormons in same sex marriages will be considered apostates and subject to excommunication, a more rigid approach than the church has taken in the past.

The new policies were contained in a handbook for lay leaders that was disseminated on Thursday to those who administer the church’s 30,000 congregations around the world. The church made no public announcement of the change, but it was leaked to the news media and confirmed by a church spokesman.

Mormons in same sex marriages will be considered apostates and subject to excommunication

“The church has long been on record as opposing same-sex marriages,” the spokesman, Eric Hawkins, said in a statement. “While it respects the law of the land, and acknowledges the right of others to think and act differently, it does not perform or accept same-sex marriage within its membership.”

Before the handbook change, bishops and congregational leaders had more discretion in whether or how far to discipline Mormons in same-sex marriages. Now same-sex marriage has been added to a list of conditions considered apostasy, which means Mormons in same-sex marriages will be subject to disciplinary hearings that result in excommunication.

Some liberal Mormons expressed outrage online at the new policies. Jana Riess, a columnist with Religion News Service, said she was livid that children born to those living out of wedlock, as well as rapists and murderers, can be baptized and blessed, but not children of monogamous same-sex couples.

“It’s heartbreaking for me to see my church drawing this line in the sand, which leaves faithful L.G.B.T. members with an impossible choice: They can either be excluded from lifelong love and companionship, or excluded from the blessings of the church,” she said.

The church has actively lobbied against laws legalizing same-sex unions, but has also in recent years supported laws intended to protect gay people from discrimination. In March of this year, leaders at the church’s headquarters in Salt Lake City helped to pass a bill known as the “Utah compromise,” which bans discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in housing and employment but protects religious institutions that do not condone gay relationships.

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New York Times, by Laurie Goldstein, November 6, 2015

in In the News / Parenting / Religious  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Surrogate Legal Expansion Expected in China

Surrogate, Legal Expansion Expected in China

Surrogate businesses in China are expecting a new wave of surrogate legal expansion following the end of the country’s decades-long one-child policy and allow all couples to have a second child, the media reported on Tuesday.

The Communist Party of China’s Central Committee announced on October 29 at the end of a four-day plenary session in Beijing that the country will ease its family planning policy and allow all couples to have two children in order to help deal with the aging population.

A week after the announcement, several surrogacy agencies said there has been an increase in the number of people reaching out to them about having a second child through a surrogate mother, the Global Times reported.

Following second child policy, surrogate legal expansion in China’s surrogacy sector expected

“There are three types of customers; the first type is those who are too old to risk giving birth to a child or due to the fact that the eggs of those aged over 35 have a bigger chance of having chromosomal abnormalities. The second type is those who have problems with the womb,” said an official from a Shanghai surrogacy agency.

“The third type is those who want to decide the gender of the embryo,” Li said.

Surrogacy was officially banned in China after a ruling in 2001 that no medical organisations or personnel would be allowed to be involved in any form of surrogacy. Violators faced a fine of up to 30,000 yuan ($4,730) and had to bear criminal responsibility.

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Daijiworld.com, November 5, 2015

in In the News / International / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Second Parent Adoptions Suggested & Needed

 Second Parent Adoptions Are Suggested & Needed

Second parent adoptions are essential in protecting the right on the non-biological parent in every case of same sex union, marriage or cohabitation and here’s why! One tenet of the debate surrounding same-sex marriage has focused on whether same-sex parents provide poorer conditions for raising children compared with different-sex parents. Political and public dialogue ensures that this notion remains pervasive and persuasive, even though the Supreme Court decision this summer ensured marriage equality in the U.S.

Second Parent Adoptions are Needed. . . And it isn’t just talk: Laws exist that implicitly reflect the rhetoric that somehow same-sex parents are different.

For example, even though same-sex couples make decisions together to have a child, and even if both parents appear on the birth certificate, the non-biological parent may have limited legal rights over the child. In Texas, two parents of the same sex are even prohibited from being listed on supplemental birth certificates, only allowing for parents where “one of whom must be a female, named as the mother, and the other of whom must be a male, named as the father.”

Although all states offer second parent adoption to same-sex parents in legally recognized unions, only 15 states and the District of Columbia offer second-parent adoption to same-sex parents in cohabiting relationships. This means that in cases where the parents are not married, the non-biological partner may be denied access to the children.

An underlying assumption about parents in same-sex couples seems to be that same-sex parents are less invested or are unable to follow through on the types of parenting that matter for children.

This type of argument is often rooted in the idea that biological parents who are partnered with each other have an advantage over a parent partnered with someone other than their child’s biological parent, with non-biological parents less likely to invest or commit to children who are not their “own.”

This is wrong and must stop! Second Parent Adoptions are Needed As Policies Against Same Sex Parenting Are Not Science Based

Laws and policies that undermine the rights of same-sex parents are more based on politics than on actual science of how they parent. Same-sex parents who conceive children via assisted reproductive technology, for example, should have the same parental rights as heterosexual parents who conceive via assisted reproductive technology and do not have to jump through the same legal hoop.

Very little research has directly tested whether there are different types of parenting investments by same-sex couples. However, in one study that we conducted, we found no difference in the amount of time parents spend with children between same-sex parents and different-sex mothers. But there is a catch.

Mothers in same-sex relationships, fathers in same-sex relationships and mothers in heterosexual relationships spent about the same amount of time in child-focused activities, about 100 minutes a day. Men in heterosexual relationships, however, spent significantly less child-focused time than all three other groups of parents — about 50 minutes per day. That means the only difference that we found tended to favor same-sex couples (and heterosexual mothers).

Importantly, these differences persisted when we controlled for factors that have well-known influences on time spent with children, including parent’s education, the number of children, the age of the children, and parent’s time spent working or commuting. Here’s the catch to this “no difference” conclusion. When combining estimates across mothers and fathers to look at time investments at the family level, not just by individual parents, children raised in same-sex families would receive an average of 3.5 hours of child-focused time a day, compared with 2.5 hours for children in heterosexual families.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

By Alexa Martin-Storey,Kate Prickett – Special to the American-Statesman

November 3, 2015

in Adoption / In the News / Parenting / Religious / Science  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Should A Same Sex Couple Get Fertility Benefits?

Are A Same Sex Couple Entitled to Fertility Benefits?

Same sex couple Sarah Soller-Mihlek, a Brooklyn guitar instructor, and Jill Soller-Mihlek say, “We want to start a family,” speaking into a camera focused on Sarah and “We’ve always dreamed of becoming parents,” adds her wife, Jill.

The couple made the video last year and posted it to Indiegogo, a crowdfunding website, in hopes of raising enough money to pay for fertility treatments. Jill Soller-Mihlek, now 33, was hoping to get pregnant via a sperm donor and intrauterine insemination, which can costs tens of thousands of dollars depending on how long it takes to conceive.

Although the couple’s insurance plan typically covers fertility treatment, their insurer, United Healthcare, would not cover the cost. The reason? Jill Soller-Mihlek didn’t meet its definition of infertility because she did not have sex with men.

The couple’s insurance policy defines infertility as an “inability to achieve pregnancy after 12 months of unprotected heterosexual intercourse.” But women who use sperm donors must pay for costly, physician-supervised therapeutic donor insemination for 12 months before they meet the definition of infertility. (Women 35 and older need to go through six failed attempts before meeting the clinical definition of infertility.)

After the Soller-Mihleks paid $13,507 out of pocket for nine unsuccessful cycles of insemination, they decided to chronicle their travails on Indiegogo and Change.org. While the United Healthcare policy tacitly acknowledges single women and same-sex couples, many policies do not. Some even exclude unwed women. Notably, major insurers like United Healthcare often do cover insemination treatments when the issue is male infertility.

The Soller-Mihleks believe their plan’s criteria for granting medical coverage of fertility treatment reveals a subtle form of discrimination against lesbians. (Needless to say, gay men face even greater obstacles in attempting to gain coverage, given that coverage wouldn’t extend to the woman who’d be carrying for them.)

The Soller-Mihleks say their concern is that a female same sex couple, by definition, is incapable of getting pregnant through heterosexual intercourse and requires medical intervention to conceive. They say the subtext of the United Healthcare policy is that a lesbian could get pregnant by having sex with a man, she just chooses not to.

Shannon Price Minter, head of the legal division at the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said: “To me, the central injustice is that when a person has a known condition that precludes them from becoming pregnant, such as a woman who has had her ovaries removed, there is no requirement to go through a period of unprotected intercourse before being recognized as requiring fertility treatments. The same should be true for same-sex couples.”

Tyler Mason, a spokesman for UnitedHealthcare, said the company’s policy is based on the clinical disease of infertility, as defined by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

“Our coverage criteria are based on clinical trial data, published literature and recommendations from a wide variety of medical specialty societies and state laws,” Mr. Mason wrote in a statement. “We constantly review and update coverage criteria.”

Aetna also uses the clinical definition of infertility to support its reimbursement policies for fertility treatments.

“It’s not a pregnancy benefit,” said Cynthia B. Michener, an Aetna spokeswoman. “It’s based on the clinical disease of infertility, supported by medical evidence and medical society guidelines, including those set out by the A.S.R.M., and it’s the same for everyone.”

Click here to read the entire article.

 

New York Times, November 2, 2015, by Stephanie Fairyington

in Egg Donation / IVF / Known Donor / Legal / Legislation / Science  by Anthony Brown 0 comments