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.

Or due to our dubious politics?) are the Trojan horse leading to a 'Brave New World' kind of imaginary future?

Obviously I do not include all lesbians in this., but yes, the Trojan horse.

In this thread it has been argued that:

1. The word father has no biological meaning because some men (falsely, perhaps unknowingly) claim to be the father on birth certificates.
2. The word mother has no biological meaning because two women, one who gave birth and the other who is biologically unrelated, are equally the child’s mother.
3. The word parent has no biological meaning, it is simply the word for someone written on a child’s birth certificate.
4. Biological and genetic relationships have no significant value or importance in families.
5. The uniting of two gametes is an insignificant event in the creation of a human being.
6. Experimenting on embryos and gametes is a positive thing if it enables people to create a person to be their child or can improve the person born.

If you take all of these claims to be true, then mum’s as dads on birth certificates, surrogacy, designer babies, estrangement of children from their biological relatives, removal of children from their parents simply because ‘someone else can raise them better’, dad’s calling themselves mums, dads attempting to breastfeed babies, and a whole host of other dodgy things are made acceptable.

When these things are argued for by lesbians, they seem harmless, and the transhumanists (and other people with a vested interest in weakening the meaning and value of biology) absolutely depend on lesbians paving the way for further advancement.

Huge medical advances were made by Nazi scientists because they were unhindered by ethical considerations. Where do you sit with that?

I’d say that on balance if would have been better if the Nazis had never gained power and the medical advances had been left to be made by someone else, but I’m not sure how that’s relevant to this discussion? Do you believe that medical advances are only made by murderous, evil regimes?

No, of course not.

The point I am making is that there is a tension between medical ethics and medical advance.

The Nazis we’re unhindered by medical ethics, so they were able to do terrible, cruel, inhumane experiments on human beings, which provided extremely valuable data which advanced medicine by leaps and bounds.

I would rather medical advance was slow and cautious, extremely mindful of ethics, impacts and consequences, even if that means cures for some diseases take longer to find.

But I never argued that there should be no ethical constraints on medical progress. And you weren’t arguing that experiments in relation to fertility and assisted reproduction should be slow or cautious, I thought you said your view was that there should be no further experiments involving gametes or embryos?

Yes. I think that any cure for diseases should be found by other means.

As for technologies like human cloning or putting one woman’s DNA in another’s gamete -they don’t pass the ‘is it justified to do something this radical’ ethical test imo.

But you haven’t explained why you think it would be unethical to make an embryo out of two women’s gametes?

This

The idea is to take one woman’s egg and put another woman’s DNA into it, like cloning Dolly the sheep.

I don’t think human cloning is currently allowed, but of course, if lesbians push for this, then it’s easy to say, ‘if a woman’s DNA can be put in another woman’s egg so they can have a baby, what is the harm in a woman putting her DNA into her own egg to clone herself a baby?’, then people will say ‘fair is fair, equality and everything, if two women can make a baby together using one woman’s gamete and the other’s DNA, surely two men should be able to manufacture a baby together by scraping out a woman’s DNA from her gamete and replacing it with the DNA of two men?’ and of course ‘it’s only fair that one man should be able to clone himself a baby by scraping the DNA out of a woman’s gamete and entirely replacing the DNA with his own’….

Its crossing a threshold into manufacturing and engineering human beings, for no benefit to those human beings at all - it’s just a ‘nice to have’ for the women who want it - that’s just not a strong enough reason to do it. Just because it is possible to do it in principle it doesn’t justify doing it in reality. There are so many unknowns for the individuals manufactured by this process, for example, chromosomal defects can have seemingly unrelated patterns of conditions associated in a syndrome of learning and physical disabilities. Perhaps Dolly the sheep had such things, but they would be undetectable to us but other sheep would know something is off. What if this opened up certain inherited traits, for example, the offspring would be more likely to have sons with muscular dystrophy? This could affect generations to come. And for what? A ‘nice to have’?

So it’s unethical because it doesn’t pass the threshold of ‘can this fundemental violation of the person be justified’ and it opens up the gates and paves the way for further experimental manufacturing of human beings.

I can’t believe there are people who think a person’s ID documents exist to prove the rights and responsibilities of their parents. SMH.

I’m not talking about cloning (replicating a person’s complete DNA), I’m talking about mixing half of one woman’s DNA with half of another’s. That’s a very different proposition from cloning, because it’s just a different way of bringing about the same thing that currently happens when an embryo is created. Allowing a person to be created who is genetically identical to an existing person raises very different ethical issues (not least regarding the motivations of the person seeking to create the child, and the psychological impact on the child).

It’s the same technical process as cloning - putting one woman’s DNA into another woman’s gamete. There would be a very small line to cross to use a woman’s own DNA like Dolly the sheep.

Also, in the name of equality, using the same arguments to justify the fundamental violation of a person’s DNA so that two women can get the closest facsimile of the ‘heterosexual nuclear family structure’ possible, it would be argued that two men should be able to replicate themselves and experience the same close facsimile too (using the process we are told is being developed to eliminate genetic abnormalities in a woman’s gamete, by scraping out the DNA from the egg of a different woman) harnessing the ‘three person’ embryo technology.

There are also some ethical implications of the fact that two women could only create girls and two men could only create boys.

Somewhat more than ethical questions. Ability to reproduce would be another.

Even if the two technological processes were similar, that doesn’t mean if you allowed same sex embryo creation you would have to allow cloning - as I said above, the practical results and ethical implications are very different.

and I agree that, if this technology were available, it should be equally available to male same sex couples as to female ones. Of course, their ability to make use of it would depend on a surrogate, which you may believe shouldn’t be allowed, but that’s a separate question.

Why do you draw the line at cloning? Surely misanthropic asexuals have just as much right to manufacture a baby which is genetically theirs as two lesbians?

@TangledRoots going back to the earlier discussion though, I would be interested to know - is it your view that it would be better if the use of donor gametes were prohibited? So a same sex couple, or a couple where one or both of them is infertile, or a single woman wanting to have a child, would have no way to create an embryo? (I appreciate that in practice it would be impossible to stop people obtaining donor sperm outside of a clinical setting, but imagining hypothetically that it was possible, or at least that the state and medical profession would cease to have any role in facilitating the use of donor gametes).

Yes, I strongly lean towards that. I believe it is better for lesbians and gay men to come to arrangements with people they know in order to become parents, and to remain involved in their upbringing. I think donor gametes are not a solution for infertility either.

I think the issue there Tangled is that you can’t actually force people to stay in contact afterwards? There’s nothing stopping someone from becoming pregnant via a friend (or stranger) and then moving to Timbuktu and never telling a child who their genetic father is.

Arguably, using a donor in the UK provides more information to the donor conceived child than that, and access to that information is provided to the child so the parents can’t actually hide it. Unless of course they tell the child that their dad is biologically their dad, but lesbians can’t do that.

I guess your solution to that would be to force biological parents to be listed on their children’s birth certificates but you can’t regulate that either if there’s no legal use of gametes. I’d just have to say I don’t know who the father is or that it was a one night stand. You can’t legislate against different sexual choices.

Yes, people can be dishonest, selfish, relationships can break down, people can go back on their word, and you can’t force them not to.

I guess my question is are you arguing to change the law to attempt to force people to act in a manner which you feel personally is more ethical, moral, correct, or “best”?

Because you can’t actually do that, you could legislate for how someone would be able to create a baby in a state-sanctioned way, making it much harder for same-sex and otherwise infertile couples to access treatment. But all you would probably achieve is to make it more likely that people would lie in order to continue to exercise their right to a private and family life.

Which I’m guessing would be counterproductive for you given what you have said previously about your personal views on what is best for children. I personally would feel deeply upset if I felt that my only option to have a baby and raise it with my wife was to have a one-night stand and hide the pregnancy from the biological father as some kind of unofficial sperm donor situation. I’d also feel like I’d have to hide the father from my child which would also feel wrong.

The way things are currently I am greatly relieved that I can access safe care, that my child can access identifying information about their donor when they reach adulthood if they do choose, and that as children they will have the safety and security of being raised in a loving marriage where both their parents (myself and my wife) will have parental responsibility and be able to make decisions for them. I just can’t see any detriments in that scenario. But I also don’t subscribe to this idea of that being a gateway to terrible awful brave new world things.

I personally would feel deeply upset if I felt that my only option to have a baby and raise it with my wife was to have a one-night stand and hide the pregnancy from the biological father as some kind of unofficial sperm donor situation. I’d also feel like I’d have to hide the father from my child which would also feel wrong.

Are you unaware of another option, which has been going for a long time, one which involves no secrets or lies?

Sometimes a woman or a man will enter into an agreement, usually using insemination without intercourse, with a lesbian or gay couple. They have a long term cooperative friendship and the child gets to have a relationship with both its biological parents, but usually lives with its mother.

Perhaps this is happening much less since donor clinics and surrogacy have become normalised and the child’s rights are completely forgotten in the scramble.

Personally, there is no way I would do that - it sounds fraught with potential difficulties and complications, and would completely disrupt and change the nature of the family that my partner and I intend to have. I appreciate you see the situation very differently - you think that if my partner and I have a child using donor sperm, the child would not in fact be mine and my partner’s, it would be hers with the man who provided the sperm, because you think genetics are the most important thing. I disagree. It don’t seem like we’re ever going to see eye to eye on this.

I wanted to give you a proper answer to this post, but I am only just getting an opportunity to now.

are you arguing to change the law to attempt to force people to act in a manner which you feel personally is more ethical, moral, correct, or “best”?

I want the law to represent the truth as accurately and transparently as possible, to ensure child-centredness in decision-making, and ensure conscious awareness, culpability and full responsibility in the adults making the decisions and taking the actions.

The thing is, donor gamete banks and surrogacy were originally an ethically dubious last chance saloon for infertile people. Ethically dubious because couples who could not accept their infertility sought to purposely create genetically bewildered children, possibly with an emotional wound akin to that of relinquished children and the secrecy and lies about it, to spare the blushes of all the adults involved. All very shadowy and hush hush.

What’s happening now, is that this ethically dubious last chance saloon for infertile people is now the first port of call for many who aren’t even infertile, with pretty much no thought about the rights of the created child.

I would like the law to be changed where donor clinics make all involved agree to be contacted, at any time, by the donor(s) - or the recipient of the gamete(s), and also any families of any half-siblings, at any time, no waiting until a child is eighteen or denying the adults information on the person they’ve procreated with. Also the clinics would inform the donor and all recipient families when a new half sibling was born, providing contact details to all. This would mean that children would be entitled to meet their genetic extended families and any half-siblings as well as their genetic parents and potentially have a relationship with them throughout their childhood.
I would like registered births and birth certificates to be equally open and transparent about who the genetic parents are and I think there needs to be some modification or additional form to allow non-genetic parents to claim legal parental responsibility, but I do not think this should be de facto. There should be some sort of proof that this biologically unrelated person has been integral to the creation of the child.

If these changes were brought in, I think the culpability, responsibility and mandatory child-centredness for all, would make this seem much less attractive as a first port of call for people who don’t want to centre the child, and also fewer people would be willing to donate gametes.

This would lead to more common informal scenarios where children’s rights would be at the heart of family creation and if more lesbian and gay couples came to agreements, that could potentially mean that a child has the benefit of four adults thinking the sun shines out of its backside, four adults’ salaries, four adults’ love and care, four adults’ knowledge, wisdom and guidance.

So no one would be ‘forced’ to anything other than be open, transparent, responsible and child-centred. As I believe it should be.

There’s no way for two people of the same sex to have a child which isn’t fraught with potential difficulties. Mother Nature must be a homophobe.