A lesbian mom is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to rule that she is the legal parent of a child that her ex-wife conceived through artificial insemination.
Christina Strickland and Kimberly Strickland Day married in 2009 in Massachusetts. Kimberly already had a child that she adopted in 2007, and she and Christina wanted another child.
They decided that Kimberly would be the one to get pregnant, and they used a sperm donor.
In 2015, their relationship had ended and Kimberly got married to a man and told Christina that she couldn’t see their child, Z.S., anymore. Christina sued to have Kimberly’s second marriage annulled (since the two women never divorced) and to get divorced. She sought 50-50 custody with Kimberly.
Earlier this year, a lower court judge ruled that Christina would have to pay child support and could have visitation rights, but that she wasn’t legally Z.S.’s parent.
“The court finds two women cannot conceive a child together,” county court judge John Grant wrote in his ruling. “The court doesn’t find its opinion to be a discriminatory statement, but a biological fact.”
He said that Z.S. already has two parents – Kimberly and Donor No. 2687 – so making Christina a parent would violate Donor No. 2687’s parental rights.
Grant insisted that the women should have terminated Donor No. 2687’s parental rights and that the donor’s waiver of parental rights wasn’t entered into the record in time. Even though no one knows Donor No. 2687’s identity, Grant said that Christina should have issued a public notice so that Donor No. 2687 could have asserted his parental rights if he wanted to.
In Mississippi, as in many other states, a mother’s spouse is automatically listed as a baby’s other parent on their birth certificate. But Z.S. was born before same-sex marriage was recognized in Mississippi, so while Christina was the baby’s parent in reality, legally she wasn’t.
by Alex Bollinger, LGBTQNation.com, December 11, 2017
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