Lesbian mothers should be on birth certificates

[SapphosRock]

Great article from Kathleen Stock.

unherd.com/2023/07/lesbian-mothers-should-be-on-birth-certificates/

It is surprising to me that anyone who supports women's rights would oppose lesbian parents having equal rights to straight parents.

From the article:

Naming a second lesbian parent on a child’s birth certificate is a family-friendly move. Arguably, if you squint a bit, it’s even a socially conservative move — though agreeing probably depends on whether you take, as your baseline, a society where lesbians will have children anyway; or whether you think of it as a cultural aberration that could, with discouragement, be stopped. Either way, putting a second lesbian partner on a birth certificate officially defines and legitimises her parenting relation within the family, allowing the burdens and joys to be shared between two adults, and adding a second layer of protection for the child. Family stability is important for good childhood outcomes, and this measure seems to provide some.

Do you want the sperm donor's actual name to be on the birth certificate i.e. do away with any anonymity in sperm donation? Or would you want it to say "sperm donor"? If it's the former then that's a much wider issue than just birth certificates. And if it's the latter then what good would that do?

The eggs do know they are not in the body that made them. The lesbian aspect is irrelevant. Hypertension and post partum hemorrhage are much higher in OD pregnancies. Google is hour friend here.

The point I was trying to make is: why make it complicated? Why not use woman A' s eggs in woman A's womb and change it over for child no.2?

Google would be far more your friend with your contributions.

1 because some women cant or dont want to give birth
2 who says they're having 2 children?
3 because they can?

Its rude to keep saying the same thing when you have been told it is not true or factual in legal terms. You are uninformed and wrong and your insistence is strange.

Google it it you must but we are not here to correct your misconceptions several.times over.

Sorry I didn't notice you replied to me earlier. I see that the child doesn't get access to their donor information as adults if they don't request it, therefore it relies on their mother to have told them they were donor conceived. I'm not sure a birth certificate is a great way of alerting adults that they were donor conceived if their parents kept it a secret, most people never see their birth certificate do they, you don't need it for many purposes as an adult.

And why should an unmarried lesbian parent have to go through a lengthy process to go on the birth certificate when all an unmarried father has to do is turn up to the registration and state he's the father?

@DonorMum And unless and until certain posters are willing to advocate for listing sperm donors instead of the mothers’ husbands in the case of straight couples, your homophobia slip is showing.

Posters have said over and over again that the biological father's name should be on the birth certificate and the mother's husband should be an adoptive father. So if anything is 'showing' it's your willingness to use the accusation of 'homophobia' as a tactic to win an argument.

Yes, it is funny when so many people on this thread claim to only care about biology, which has been discussed at length, but refuse to address the analogous situation in heterosexual couple, which is completely relevant in a discussion about how a country chooses to record births.

Are you suggesting that hetero couples are the badly done to set when it comes to conception and the law? Surely not
Whataboutery isnt usually popular

I don't think this poster understands what homophobia is. What donormum is saying is the exact opposite of homophobia....

Omg.

In going to say ir really simply.

In legal terms, the parent is the one who gives birth.

You can agree or disagree but your posts are bizarre. Its legal fact.

Why are you arguing and discussing am issue you know absolutely nothing about?

of course not, I have suggested that the same standards apply to all donor conceived children, even in heterosexual couples, that is all.

I personally don’t think it’s necessary to list a donor with no parental responsibility, but the people that think so should apply the standard equally.

I don’t think you properly read the post you replied to. The point was that gamete donation affects far more children born to straight couples.

But you're comparing apples and oranges.

We are talking about the complexities for lesbian couples, shown by the idiotic responses on this thread who argue about things they dont know.

The fact theres more straight couples is irrelevant. That's not what the thread is about.

That's like someone talking about their cat and you saying well what about dogs.

We didnt ask.

This is a thread about lesbians. If you want to fight the cause of straight parents, start a thread.

Outright lie. I cba looking back through but you were stating it as fact earlier in the thread. Youce been proved wrong and are back tracking.

That aside, we dont need to change anything. How arrogant of you.

Although I can guess your views on trans issues and are too coloured in your view, il humour you.

Let's say we (you) want to change the law.
Are you changing it so that the egg giver is the legal parent, not the person who gives birth to a child? ...why?

@flaffydaffy

And why should an unmarried lesbian parent have to go through a lengthy process to go on the birth certificate when all an unmarried father has to do is turn up to the registration and state he's the father?

I'm sorry I misread the info. When a mother is not married or in a civil partnership, her partner can be seen as the child’s second parent if both women:
• are treated together in the UK by a licensed clinic
• have made a ‘parenthood agreement
To register the birth, they just both need to turn up at the registration.

Do you want the sperm donor's actual name to be on the birth certificate i.e. do away with any anonymity in sperm donation? Or would you want it to say "sperm donor"? If it's the former then that's a much wider issue than just birth certificates. And if it's the latter then what good would that do?

No, because you don't know their name. And no, I (or my son rather) would like his father's donor number recorded.

I’m a lesbian with donor conceived children, I think I’m on the right thread 🙄

it does matter that standards are applied equally within a society, and pointing out that this would be impossible to regulate within heterosexual couple Is an appropriate consideration in the analogous situation in homosexual couples.

I take your point. I'm just not sure where it gets us.

I think the point is that the BC should be a biologically/factually accurate statement about who a person is, and children of donors have as much right as naturally conceived children to have that truth and accuracy about who they are - factually, biologically, genetically on their birth certificate.

Until donor assisted conception intervened in the natural process of creating babies and essentially ‘split’ the meaning of mother and the meaning of parent, this was not an issue.

There is a good case for ‘birth certificate’ and ‘parental responsibility certificate’ to be separated into two separate documents, in the case of donor conception, or for the donor’s names to be on an additional section of the birth certificate, which does have any associated parental responsibility.

I do not believe that people who use complicated methods to obtain a child should have the same right to simple documentation as those who conceive without the added complexity of donor parentage. It’s complex. The documents should show it. Why shouldn’t it?

It makes it easy to point out the blatant discrimination and homophobia.

If a heterosexual man has the right to use a donor to have a child with his partner without acknowledging the donor, a homosexual woman should have an equal right to do so.

If neither have this right because a child’s right to know their verified genetic parentage supersedes all, then all children must be DNA tested at registration.

It may seem insulting to you.

To me, as a mother who actually gave birth, it is incredibly insulting to dismiss the physical sacrifices such as pregnancy vomiting, genital tearing, stress incontinence, post-childbirth womb infection, and pure pain I went through, by suggesting that a lesbian who has never been pregnant should be recorded on a birth certificate as a mother. She is not one.

This kind of lobbying is just another example of the anti-woman movement promoted across the world at the moment. You can recognise it by the way it dismisses women’s experiences and biological realities. Most importantly, it also tells mothers that we are no longer allowed opinions about matters concerning our bodies and that someone else’s feelings are far more important than our own.