no. 405
The Nation's Pulse
Motherless in
By James M. Thunder
Published 7/11/2007 12:07:52 AM
I came upon the American Spectator op-ed column yesterday listed above and linked to HERE that examined the Maryland court case In re Roberto d.B. I don't usually read what I refer to as political magazines but when I saw this column, via Google, I was intrigued as I had read about the case earlier this year and posted a link to a news story, see here for that post, but I had not seen much in the way of op-ed pieces about it.
In short the case involves a man who made arrangements for an egg donor to donate to him eggs for the obvious purpose of inseminating them and having a surrogate carry the embryos to term. After the delivery of the resulting twin girls the hospital and state listed the surrogate as the mother. The man, who is listed as the father petitioned the courts to have the surrogate's name removed from the birth certificates and won.
The article made me wonder about situations when gay men arrange for donor egg and surrogates to carry the resulting embryos. How are those birth certificates filed? Who is generally listed as the mother? The egg donor or the surrogate?
Again I am unsure if I agree with all of the writers views but it was an interesting article to read and struck a chord in me regarding the rights of the children born and I wondered how they will react as they grow up with no mother at all listed on their birth certificates.
2 comments:
OMG! I can't even begin to process this fully.
Thanks for the article. I'm going to have read it over again.
It's odd, though, the issue of the birth certificate was one of the first thoughts came into my head when I began thinking about donor sperm: Would I be listed? The donor? Would it be left blank?
What terrifies me more about the article is the years of legal wrangling and bs. Cripes, isn't this a long enough process, an emotionally wrenching enough process without adding six years of litigation after it?
Can anyone anylonger define what used to be simple words like Mother, Father, Sibling, Family?
But, really, how is the different than the empty "father" blank on the birth certificate of children born to SMCs or lesbian moms?
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