Three fathers now.

[Igneococcus]

Whatever next?
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5dc4f5d8-7b7e-11eb-83b7-5869de54abef?shareToken=bd5e62f29aae305ea21426c3155bc5ab

@talesofginza

The right of gay men to access women's bodies to provide them with progeny is being vociferously defended in the comments...

I despair...

This is not the totality of my opinion on this subject, but it's a natural extension of a woman's right to choose in regards to all aspects of her pregnancy. Whether her choice is to abort, have a child she cannot easily financially support or have a child with a man with a history of not supporting children he's had with other partners, she should also be free to choose to give her child to gay men to raise. I would agree that being raised by a single-sex throuple will lead to some issues for a child, but they're not insurmountable and the benefits of 3 doting parents may even offset them. Children of single mothers are demonstrably worse off, but I imagine a thread stating that would get a lot of backlash.

Yet there are many who feel the emotional validation of white males is more important. And I find sticking it under the banner of "inclusive to different family set ups" even more distasteful

Why call out just white males? Here’s a sickening story about a rich Japanese man who fathered at least a dozen children through surrogates, mostly in Thailand:

www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-43123658

Fair point I've seen lots of entitled behaviour recently by white men so they seem to be more at the forefront of my mind.

Why the fuck are these women selling their babies to these men. I just don't understand.

It's not clear to me from the article what this looks like legally.

It says the men adopted the children, so does this mean there are two birth certificates, one for the birth parents (whoa are also three it seems, egg donor, surrogate/carryer, and father though I doubt they'd include all three,) and one for the adopted parents?

If so, I don't necessarily have a problem with a second, adoptive birth certificate as long as the one with the biological parents also exists.

But I don't think there should ever be intentional false original birth certificates. They should have the people believed to be the real biological parents, so long as they are known or thought to be known, and it should be possible to challenge them on the rare occasion where it turns out that, say, the father is really someone else.

Birth certificates aren't there to validate the people who raise, or even commission, the child.

But three adoptive parents is a bad idea, IMO. At that point there is no reason not to have a whole group as legal guardians of children, how do you draw a line?

California may "at the court's discretion" allow adoptees access to their original birth certificat.
www.cdss.ca.gov/adoption-services/adoptee-information/obtain-birth-certificate

Or even certificate; I think a certificat would be a well documented feline.

My main concern is that the mother's name is removed from the birth certificate

Same here, what about the child's right to know who their mother is? They are deliberately withholding vitally important (for mental and physical health reasons), information from someone and that should be illegal.

Sorry, but I think this is becoming a very messed up World, where narcissism is rife, people play with children's lives to simply push their own (dubious) image - "Look at us World, we are the first to do this".
The fact that the children here, may never know who their mother is IMHO atrocious. What happens when dad number four or five enter stage left, or two of the dads break away because parenting is just so boring?
Imagine what the children will have to go through at school, it probably will not be very pleasant.
I just hope they will be OK.

Women should not be treated as mere incubators even if they are ok with it.

@AmySosa

This is quite literally human trafficking. Babies bought and sold.

I fear that any child would feel this arrangement disorienting. It will be a miracle if the three people stay together until the child is an adult.

Who will be their anchor in the world. This makes me feel so sad for the child.

It doesn't actually say anywhere that the mother's names aren't on the birth certs... And who counts as the mother anyway, the woman who provided the eggs or the women who acted as surrogates? These women are all named in the article so who is to say they will have nothing to do with the children growing up or are not on the birth certificates? The whole article is pretty vague and leaves a lot open to interpretation.

I saw an academic I respected, subtweet a woman GP who questioned the ethics of this. He passive aggressively suggested her questioning this was hate speech and copied the gmc handle. Really sad to see. They are openly destroying women and mothers rights.

I think if you want to do this, you have to make polygamy legal. And if you want to do that, you need to think about it very carefully and discuss it as a society.

Part of the reason for gay marriage was to protect children, in terms of custody and inheritance, if parents died or split up.

@RedJe55

It doesn't actually say anywhere that the mother's names aren't on the birth certs... And who counts as the mother anyway, the woman who provided the eggs or the women who acted as surrogates? These women are all named in the article so who is to say they will have nothing to do with the children growing up or are not on the birth certificates? The whole article is pretty vague and leaves a lot open to interpretation.

It clearly says there are three names on the birth certificate and that the three adoptive dads are all named. By my superior sleuthing skills, I have deduced that there are no mothers mentioned.

Women who give birth to babies are mothers.

Abortion rights hasn’t led to surrogacy.
Surrogacy (back into history) has been legitimised by states because the intended parents wanted it. They hold the power in this dynamic. It was not made legal because it was something women wanted to do with their bodies.

Abortion rights weren’t even grudgingly finally granted in the UK in the 1960s after millennia of women dying and being maimed by unsafe abortion just because women wanted to have that option. They’d been asking to have that option for decades.

I can’t think of an instance around women’s bodies and the law where something has been granted just because women asked for it. (Sadly).

Whether her choice is to abort, have a child she cannot easily financially support or have a child with a man with a history of not supporting children he's had with other partners, she should also be free to choose to give her child to gay men to raise.

So should she be free to give her child to anyone she happens to want to gift her child to? Is there an age limit? Does it have to be a newborn or can she give away a trying toddler? Or a five year old?

And why stop at gifting the child? Shouldn't she be free to ask for a fair price?

Thankfully some people are looking out for the rights of the child.

It clearly says there are three names on the birth certificate and that the three adoptive dads are all named. By my superior sleuthing skills, I have deduced that there are no mothers mentioned.

Women who give birth to babies are mothers

You are assuming there is only one birth certificates, which is not the case in some states - a new one is sometimes created for an adoption. Someone above said that in California the courts can grant access to an original BC, which suggests that a new one is issued when there is an adoption there and the old one remains on record somewhere.

The article is not at all clear if that is, or is not, what happened here, or what might be on the original BC if there is one.

Huh. While I do not necessarily agree with the idea of three parents, I'm not sure why people are so focused on the birth certificate as an absolute and pure record of biology.

Several people have said "the woman who gives birth is the mother". Well, in this case the woman who gave birth was actually not the biological mother, so whose name should we put on the certificate ? The one who gave birth or the one who shares genes with the baby ? Both ? Neither ?

Also, if the birth certificate absolutely has to reflect biology then I guess women shouldn't be allowed to give birth anonymously. So that those who wish to do so end up giving birth in unsafe conditions instead.

Also, in the name of biological exactitude, we also should test the DNA of every single father to make sure they are the real fathers. If they aren't then we should keep testing until we find the real father. Obviously leaving a blank wouldn't be an option.

See the problem there ?

I actually strongly support the idea that children have a right to know where they came from, but this is not a black and white issue. What about egg and embryo donation in fertility treatment ? The actual biological mother would be the woman who donated the egg, right ? So we should put her name on the birth certificate.

This focus on the birth certificate as some sacrosanct document is a bit ridiculous when you think about it like this.

@FannyCann

Whether her choice is to abort, have a child she cannot easily financially support or have a child with a man with a history of not supporting children he's had with other partners, she should also be free to choose to give her child to gay men to raise.

So should she be free to give her child to anyone she happens to want to gift her child to? Is there an age limit? Does it have to be a newborn or can she give away a trying toddler? Or a five year old?

And why stop at gifting the child? Shouldn't she be free to ask for a fair price?

Thankfully some people are looking out for the rights of the child.

It's not really about what "should be". We have a robust process for giving children away. It's called adoption. I'm sure money sometimes changes hands in such processes too.

I'm not sure why people are so focused on the birth certificate as an absolute and pure record of biology.

That’s not it. A birth certificate is a record of the event whereby a child was born to a named woman - the mother.

When I left the Catholic Church, I asked my former parish priest if I could have my baptism into the church annulled on account of the fact that I did not consent to being baptised. I was told this could not be done because my baptism was an event that took place and that reality could not be changed.

I’m saddened that the reality of a child being born to a mother can be airbrushed out of that child’s history to create a false history where the child has no named mother.

Whether her choice is to abort, have a child she cannot easily financially support or have a child with a man with a history of not supporting children he's had with other partners, she should also be free to choose to give her child to gay men to raise.

Well of course she should @DedlyMedally, because children are mere commodities owned by their parents, right?

They will get all the checks any other parents get

This surrogacy was in California. They do not have background checks.

Has California really stopped accurately recording births?

Yes, some time ago. David Furnish is recorded as the mother on the birth certificates of his children bought from California.

it is the child's birth certificate, belonging to them, recording information important to them about them, ie their biological parent. It is not the parents birth certificate.

Exactly and it violates the convention on the rights of the child to not accurately record their birth.

These men openly state how they didn't know it would be a problem and how Alan went full "mama bear" so the judge found a loophole through which she could grant the legal parenthood to three men.

The mothers of the children may well feature in their lives but I doubt that they will be like mothers but more like a woman they hear from at Christmas and birthdays.

The U.K's first gay dads, the Drewitt Barlows who bought their twins from California dropped the mother, the woman they had promised lifelong friendship to, within a matter of weeks. It's just one example.

The right of gay men to access women's bodies to provide them with progeny is being vociferously defended in the comments...

As it is in the U.K. on similar articles - we can anticipate a sharp increase (rather than the gradual increase in surrogacy we are seeing) if the proposed law reform comes to reflect commercial surrogacy as it is in California and more recently New York.

It's coming.

Well, in this case the woman who gave birth was actually not the biological mother

Of course she is, the baby didn't appear by magic.

The woman who made the embryo they 'adopted' or were 'gifted' is the genetic mother, the women who was pregnant and have birth is the biological mother and neither child has a social or adopted mother but one has adopted fathers and the second child has one of them, it appears, as a genetic father with the other two as adopted fathers.

All three men are legal parents.

Only one child has half of a link to their DNA and genetic history.

I just hope they are honest with the children and they don't suffer any emotional instability or psychological damage from having been born this way.

Plenty surrogate children do, particularly when they grow up and want to have their own biological children.