DM -Italy erases names of gay mothers from birth certs

For those arguing that a birth certificate should reflect dna - what about if there are more than two people's DNA involved?

The quote in your post just said "mother" not biological mother.

Your partner/husband is not your child’s biological father he has no place on the birth certificate

he can apply for a parental order or adopt if he’s not wanting to do that then is about self validation and forwarding a lie

you can’t have 3 parents

you have tow the women who have birth and the man who’s sperm feterlised the egg the father 🤷🏿‍♂️

adopted children don’t disclose their adopted status anyone who has actually seen an adoptive certificate would not know the difference my oldest is 10 in 9 years I literally have anyone notice

also it’s about truth if your hiding the truth your wanting to hide your child’s adoptive status this is harmful or your ashamed of it

we don’t tell my kids are adopted but it’s not a secret the only people I met who want to keep it secret are those who want to miss lead their child and the pesky certificate gets in the way

every child development expert
social worker
foster carer
will tell you children need to know who they are and that trumps your blushes

if your child is embarrassed about being adopted you didn’t take good enough notes during the adoption training

So in essence, you could have 3 'mothers':
The woman who donates the egg
The woman who does the work of carrying and giving birth
The man who purchased the baby such as David Furnish who was listed as 'mother' on a birth certificate by Elton John recently.

Or maybe 4, the woman who ends up doing the work of actually bringing up Elton and David's child.

@Drenton I think UK law is with me on this one. The bio mother is the one who gives birth. The woman who supplied the genetic material is not seen as the mother, unless she subsequently adopts.

my dad beat my mother I still had a right to know who is is
majority of children adopted are adopted because they have been abused they have a right to no who their biological parents are

@TangledRoots you asked about benefits to the child of having a non-genetic parent listed on the bc. Here's an example. My dd1 was born via informal sperm donation, and her dad has been an involved parent throughout. UK law doesn't accept three parents, so the fact that he is acknowledged as her father meant that her non-bio mother cannot be on bc and cannot adopt her. That mother quite quickly after developed early onset Alzheimers, so there is now no way my dd1 can have any kind of legal relationship with that parent. She won't inherit from her, for example. She has no legal right to a relationship with her should I decide not to facilitate this.

I am all for children having absolute knowledge of their genetic origins, but a birth certificate is not the right place for it because it is a document we use for identification purposes. People have a right to privacy. My adopted child should not need to disclose her bio parents every time we need to prove her age.

What does that even mean? Mother normally refers to someone who gives birth!

You know what gay people have seen time and time again? People who deliberately misrepresent and twist the truth to scaremonger and object to them having equal rights (and yes this is an equal rights issue since in Italy men are able to register as fathers when sperm donors are used and gay couples can’t adopt). People who profess to only be concerned about the children because they think it gives them some kind of moral high ground that can’t be argued with, despite having zero evidence that any children are being harmed or disadvantaged.

How many times do people have to explain to you what is wrong with making women in this situation adopt instead of being the legal parent from birth? It must have been explained in excess of three times yet you continue to ask the same question while refusing to answer the opposite question. What is the benefit of making them adopt?

Drenton, I completely disagree that the biological mother is the egg provider. The 'mother' on the bc should be the woman who carried and birthed the child: how else can we protect women from exploitative surrogacy?

Well I was referring to the situation in Italy where it's not but I don't think my point of view is pro-surrogacy. Actually I am against surrogacy.

Is that not a different certificate?

So maybe call it a guardianship certificate, rather than a birth certificate?

This thread isn't actually the law, is it? We can posit different scenarios to suggest solutions to the problem in hand and surely we can do it without calling people phobes or ists?

I think in time it will indeed become genetic information that ends up on a birth cetificate.

Some big leaps of "logic" there! Maybe they just think that it's better for the child to have a certificate which unequivocally states who is considered their legal guardian? Maybe they think that it is both impractical and unrealistic to include genetic information on a birth certificate?

@Pri0n1, thank you for coming back. Let me be really clear that I didn't accuse you, or everybody on this thread, or even most people on this thread, of homophobia. I've been an out lesbian on MN for 20 years and have found it a very supportive place. I'm also not someone to throw around accusations of homophobia just because I don't like the way a discussion is going.

The point I made (or tried to) is that people need to be more careful not to fall into "my enemy's enemy is my friend" type thinking. Some posters have said that having two women on a birth certificate is akin to saying a man can be a mum. Others have said the children's needs come first, but they are only considering the need for genetic info, not the need to support children within strong lesbian families. Some are insisting this is a simple matter (if only) and refusing to concede the complexities involved. Some have said 'Good' of this appalling act of publicly stripping lesbian mothers of their legal status.

I am proudly gender critical, but appalled by some of the grubby campaigning from our side, at the easy gibes of 'groomers' and 'pedos' and applauding of right wing moralisers. We live in a pluralistic society and if kids want to dye their hair blue and call themselves non-binary that's up to them. Trans people are not my enemy. But the laws and policies of this country have to work for women and children and if we think the only way to achieve that is to tolerate careless homophobia then I'm not on board with that.

See, I imagine that the defenders of having non-biological parents on the BC in this thread are not alone in wanting a child’s birth certificate to reflect what they want it to show, rather than the truth of who the child is.

I think there are many people who want in on the birth certificate and probably also want to disrupt the essential fact that mother = womb. Lots of people want to play happy families and have that birth certificate as a proof of their feeling of commitment. Proof that ‘we are a real family just like any other’. The only thing a BC should prove is who the baby is and where they came from.

Unrelated people on a birth certificate is a recipe for genetic bewildering, surrogacy, baby trade, etc, etc. There will be people on this thread saying “no, but we never intended these consequences because we are all good”. However, their apparently faultless, fluffy intent will always be used as a Trojan horse. We’ve seen it again and again.

An adoption certificate is proof of commitment and responsibility. What’s wrong with that?

Also, any legal agreement to protect a sperm donor from being sought for child support payments could also include a clause that he hereby agrees to be named on the birth certificate in the new ‘genetic, non-responsible parent’ section.

I don’t like this “equal parenting rights” talk. Let’s stick to prioritising the children at the heart of this please. Equal parenting responsibilities, sure.

There are lots of practical considerations involved in novel forms of conception, if there is a will to find a way to get around those, a little bit of paperwork is a much simpler matter, to truthfully document what took place.

With egg donors, it would be quite possible to insist that the women sign something to the effect that they will be on the new ‘genetic, non-responsible parent’ section of the birth certificate of any babies born. Because of the nature of male donors - that they can be informal and don’t require clinics, then there would be no way to insist they are put on birth certificates, but where a clinic is used, it could work the same for sperm donors.

How do people expect naming donors on the birth certificate is going to work? You can’t put a man down as the father without his permission unless you’re married, otherwise they need attend and sign. I think it’s incredibly unlikely women and donors will want to do this, so are we going to make it law that women have to put the biological father down on the BC? Then force the biological father to attend and sign the BC? Are we going to force men to have DNA tests if they deny being the father? It’s all good explaining dream scenarios where everyone has their biological father on their BC, but how do you expect to achieve this?

Also, in the UK you can’t put another woman as the mother on a BC if she hasn’t given birth to the child regardless of the genetics, so in the case of surrogacy the birth mother is registered as the mother and her husband/partner the father (if she has one) and they are the legal parents. The intended parents either adopt the child or complete an application for a parental order if the child is genetically theirs. So not sure why people think lesbians having their female partner registered as a parent on a BC is providing some kind of legal loophole where people can forge BCs for surrogacy or men can be registered as mothers.

I’m also yet to see anyone supporting this give even one benefit to making these women adopt the child instead of the current UK system of being named as a parent, despite asking numerous times.

people who are not biological parents should not be on the birth certificate

me and my husband are adopters we are not on our child’s birth certificate not sure why is different step parents can apply for parental orders

Thanks Bodger and I notice that nobody on the thread arguing for full genetic disclosure or the child’s right to know, or the dad’s right to know, has acknowledged the negative reality of why that requirement on a BC could be extremely dangerous for some women and their kids. I think some people think that male violence and coercion isn’t a thing?

If people are fine with non-genetically related husbands being listed but not OK with non-genetically related wives then that really can only be because they are against same sex couples having children.

Coconaut absolutely. Most people don’t like to think of themselves as being -phobic anything but then other people can only go on what they actually say, for whether that’s the case or not.

And I am not saying as any kind of a conversation stopper that anyone is lesbophobic. It just is the appropriate shorthand word for someone who doesn’t think that lesbians should have equal parenting rights as heterosexual people.

OK then. Let’s imagine that men’s genetic contribution had to be recorded on a child’s BC. No ‘leaving him off because he’s abusive’ any more- since many posters on here are naive absolutists saying it’s the child’s right to know via their BC. Imagine that info is all put on the BC. A public document that you might need to use to access a school, join a doctors surgery, or to show an employer.
It’s would be very dangerous for some women and children.
Completely agree with all your post, especially my highlighted bits and I made the same point upthread, just you worded it better 😁