‘Do it yourself’ surrogate pregnancy ends in legal chaos with three-year-old boy effectively having two mothers

The Daily Mail – by Louise Eccles, March 5, 2014

A judge has warned of the dangers of informal surrogacy agreements after a woman found she had no parental rights to the baby she had asked her friend to conceive with her husband.

The ‘do it yourself’-style surrogate pregnancy ended in the High Court after the boy, now three, was effectively left with two mothers.

Unable to have children of her own, a woman asked a close friend to be artificially inseminated at home with her husband’s sperm.

But when the woman’s marriage broke down months after the birth of the child, she found she had no parental rights because she was not the boy’s legal or biological mother.

Yesterday, she was granted a residency order to care for the child, but the judge warned against anyone considering an informal surrogacy agreement, rather than through a professional agency.

Describing the case as a ‘cautionary tale’, Mrs Justice Eleanor King underlined the ‘real dangers’ of private surrogacy agreements and urged couples to use licensed and regulated fertility clinics.

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Germany Rejects Gay Adoption Case On Technicality

Reuters – Huffington Post – February 22, 2014

By Norbert Demuth

KARLSRUHE, Germany, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Germany’s Constitutional Court on Friday threw out a case to grant gay couples the right to jointly adopt a child on a technicality, but gay rights activists noted that a ruling by the same court last February effectively allowed it.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservatives have been accused of dragging their feet over gay rights – leaving it to judges of the Constitutional Court to grant same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples.

Presently in Germany gay marriage is not allowed and gay couples cannot jointly adopt a child.

Last February however the Constitutional Court granted gay individuals the right to adopt a child already adopted by their civil partner, under a practice known as ‘successive adoption’.

A prior ban on the practice violated the principle of equal treatment regardless of sexual orientation, it said in that ruling, giving the government until July 2014 to change the law. Merkel’s new right-left coalition has pledged to do so.

The court also ruled last year that the government must treat same-sex couples on a par with heterosexual couples in taxation law.

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Vancouver Baby First in Province to Have Three Legal Parents

February 11, 2014 – Mombian.com

A baby born in Vancouver, British Columbia, is the first to have three legal parents on her birth certificate under the province’s new law. The girl was born to a lesbian couple and their male friend and sperm donor, reports CBC News. Under the new law, which passed in 2011 and came into effect last year, donors may be listed as parents as long as the parents agree in writing before conception. The family’s lawyer, barbara findlay (who doesn’t capitalize her name), told CBC News, “In the old days, we looked at biology and genetic connections. And that’s no longer true. We now look at the intention of the parties who are contributing to the creation of the child, and intend to raise the child.” That’s an important point. As we open up the possibility of allowing for more than two parents (California passed a similar law last October), we must make sure we only do so when all of the parents agree beforehand. Otherwise, we end up in situations with a donor who wants parental rights that a couple does not want to give, or a couple that wants financial or time commitments that a donor does not want to make.

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Important Information for U.S. Citizens Considering the Use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Abroad

The Department of State has issued information regarding US citizenship of children born with assisted reproductive technology.  Here is one statement: “The Department of State interprets the INA to require a U.S. citizen parent to have a biological connection to a child in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child at birth. In other words, in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to a child conceived through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), a U.S. citizen father must be the genetic parent and a U.S. citizen mother must be either the genetic
or the gestational and legal mother of the child at the time and place of the child’s birth.  (A gestational mother is the woman who
carries and gives birth to the child.) ”

The implications appear to favor a lesbian birth mother using the egg of her partner/spouse, however, it does not seem to shed any new light upon surrogate mother births for gay male couples.

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N.Y. Judge Alarms Gay Parents by Finding Marriage Law Negates Need for Adoption

New York Times, January 29, 2013

by James C. McKinley, Jr.

When Amalia C. and Melissa M. decided to start a family, they went through the well-trodden steps most same-sex couples take in New York City.

They married in 2011 and made sure both of their names were on their son’s birth certificate two years later, taking advantage of a New York State law that a child born to a married couple is presumed to be both of theirs, even if conceived through artificial insemination.

And months before Melissa gave birth to their son, Amalia started the adoption process, submitting to a criminal-background check, assembling years of financial documents and hiring a social worker to prepare a report about their household.

“Everyone we had spoken to,” said Amalia, 35, an engineer, “said the process was pretty clean-cut.”

But then a Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court judge, Margarita López Torres, ruled on Jan. 6 that because New York State had enacted same-sex marriage in 2011 and allowed both women to be listed on the boy’s birth certificate, Amalia was already the child’s parent and could not adopt him.

The ruling sent tremors through the ranks of gay couples and has exposed one of the new legal complexities facing same-sex couples with children.

The fear among same-sex couples is that without adoption papers, their parental rights might be questioned if they travel to other states or abroad. They also worry that the nonbiological parent will lose the rights if the family moves to a different state or the couple divorces.

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France urged to act over US surrogate agency

Joshua Melvin | 16 Jan 2014 – The Local

Surrogate motherhood might be illegal in France, but that hasn’t stopped an American surrogacy agency from holding meetings here, much to the ire of a group of French lawmakers who want authorities to take action.

A conservative French pressure group, backed by several lawmakers has filed a legal complaint in France against American surrogacy agency Extraordinary Conceptions.

The agency brings potential parents in France into contact with American surrogates and has reportedly been hosting informal meetings in France, a country which outlaws surrogate motherhood.

Its website also has a French version called Meres-Porteuses.com, clearly aimed at targeting a French audience.

The conservative association has decided enough is enough and has filed a legal complaint which forces authorities in France to investigate the American company.

Two lawmakers from conservative French political party UMP added their names on Wednesday to a legal complaint filed last week by watchdog group ‘Jurists for Childhood’ (Juristes Pour L’enfance), which also fought against gay marriage, newspaper Le Parisien reported on Thursday.

It is believed to be the first time a legal complaint has been filed against the group in France.

Senators Bruno Retailleau and Gérard Longuet railed against “the complicity of the French legal authorities in the business of surrogate mothers”.

Their charges were reiterated by ‘Juristes pour l’enfance’ spokeswoman Aude Mirkovic who noted the surrogacy is strictly forbidden in France. She went on to say the practics is unfair to the children it produces.”

“They bring a child into this world that doesn’t know his parents. As soon as the child is born they take him away from his mother,” she said. “That happens enough already. It’s unfair.”

The complaint is for the present largely symbolic because Extraordinary Conceptions has for the moment only hosted meetings in France.

For their part, the agency’s bosses firmly defended their work of connecting would-be parents with surrogates.

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The key to a happy relationship? Be gay. Or childless. Or make tea

January 14, 20-14 – TheIndependent.co.uk

By Richard Garner

Gay couples are likely to be happier and more positive about their relationships than heterosexuals, according to a major study by the Open University published today.

However, they are less likely to be openly affectionate towards each other – holding hands in public, for instance – because they still fear attracting disapproval.

The study of 5,000 people – 50 of whom were later followed up with in-depth interviews – aimed at finding out how modern couples keep their relationships on track through life’s difficulties.

It found that simple things – like making a cup of tea in the morning and taking it up to them in bed – were the most treasured by couples as examples of intimacy rather than more dramatic gestures such as declaring “I love you”.

It was on the relative happiness of people within different types of relationships that the survey threw up the most interesting insights into modern day life, however.

“LGBQ participants (lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer) are more generally positive about and happier with the quality of their relationship and the relationship which they have with their partner” the research concludes.

“Heterosexual parents are the group least likely to be there for each other, to make ‘couple time’, to pursue shared interests, to say ‘I love you’ and to talk openly to one another.”

But it added: “Public/private boundaries of ‘couple display’ remain fraught. Many LGBQ couples, especially the younger ones, say they would not hold hands in public for fear of reprisal.”

The study, funded by the Economic and Science Research Council, found that couples without children were generally likely to be happier than parents.

In addition, mothers were the least likely group to be satisfied with their partners.

 

To read the entire article, go to http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-key-to-a-happy-relationship-be-gay-or-childless-or-make-tea-9057349.html

 

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Woman forcibly sedated and Child taken from womb by social services

The Telegraph, November 30, 2013 – by Colin Freemen

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by   social workers.

Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that   allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.

The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian   who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental   breakdown.

The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who   are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have   made a full recovery.

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Robert Oscar Lopez: Married Gay Couples Collaborate With Human Traffickers To Have families

OnTopMagazine.com, 11/27/2013

Anti-gay marriage activist Robert Oscar Lopez on Tuesday claimed that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry leads to human trafficking.

Lopez, who is celebrated among social conservatives due to the fact that he was raised briefly in a same-sex household and claims he was damaged by the experience, appeared on Sandy Rios in The Morning to criticize passage of a marriage law in Hawaii.

“Look [at] what they did in Hawaii, that’s a state where over sixty percent of the population is Asian-American; they’re the people who came from South Korea, from Japan, from the Philippines, countries that have a very, very controversial history with adoption,” Lopez said, according to an account from Right Wing Watch. “And the predominantly white Human Rights Campaign went to Hawaii and ripped apart that state, you heard the testimony, they took a state and they just ripped at their heart.”

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Russian Draft Bill Banning Gay Parenting Withdrawn

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – October 22, 2013

A draft bill that would have stripped gay parents of their children has been withdrawn from the agenda of the Russian parliament.

Russian lawmaker Aleksei Zhuravlyov of the ruling United Russia party said the bill will be resubmitted for debate to Russia’s State Duma after changes are introduced.

He did not elaborate.

The draft was submitted to the State Duma last month.

The head of the State Duma committee on family, women, and children, Yelena Mizulina, said earlier that it was unlikely that the proposed bill would be adopted as it would have been impossible to implement because of the difficulty in identifying parents with “nontraditional sexual orientations.”

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