It’s time for another roundup of some of the LGBTQ parenting stories I haven’t covered elsewhere. This week is an international edition with stories from around the world, especially (but not exclusively) the U.K. and Ireland. Make yourself a cup of tea and have a read!
The U.K.
- PinkNews speaks with Laura-Rose Thorogood, a mom of three and LGBTQ advocate in the U.K., about the barriers to queer family making in the country, including the requirement that same-sex couples pay for six rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination), which could cost up to £25,000 (over $30,000), before being eligible for National Health Service (NHS) coverage of fertility care, versus different-sex couples who merely have to say that they’ve been trying through intercourse for two years.
- Vice follows up with an article about U.K. mums Whitney and Megan Bacon-Evans, who are suing the NHS to change those requirements.
- PinkNews also reports on the U.K. law that means kids of trans parents cannot have accurate birth certificates. “Children who were birthed by a trans man or non-binary person will have that parent listed as their mother, regardless of their gender. Trans mothers will be listed on birth certificates as ‘father,'” they explain. This applies even if the parent has legally changed their gender.
Ireland
- Geraldine Rea and Niamh O’Sullivan of Cork, Ireland, share their journey to parenthood through multiple IVF cycles and ultimately reciprocal IVF (one parent’s egg and the other’s womb), with Irish magazine Image. The couple was also the first to benefit from the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015, which came into effect in May 2020 and now allows both parents in a same-sex couple to be placed on their children’s birth certificates, ensuring they are recognized as legal parents.
- After a five-year effort, two Irish women, Ranae von Meding and Audrey Rooney, have also become one of the first same-sex couples in their country to benefit from the same legislation and have both parents’ names on their children’s birth certificates, reports the Irish Times. Although they were married at the time their children were born, only the biological mother was recognized as a legal parent.
- Despite this progress, Páraic Kerrigan and Amber L. Cushing write at RTÉ about how Irish birth certificates can be made even more inclusive of various family forms today, and offer more usefulness both to parents and their children.
Elsewhere Around the World
- Chile has approved a law to legalize marriage and adoption for same-sex couples.
- U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong Hanscom Smith and his husband Eric (Lu Ying-tsung) announced the birth of their son.
- Israel will now allow same-sex couples, single men, and transgender people to have children via surrogate.
- Polish Olympic athlete Jolanta Ogar-Hill and her spouse, filmmaker Chuchie Hill, welcomed a daughter at the end of last year, after moving to Spain to avoid the Polish government’s hostility towards LGBTQ people.
- A family court in Taiwan has for the first time ruled that a gay man may become the legal guardian of the daughter his spouse had adopted. Taiwanese law still states that people in same-sex couples can only adopt the biological children of a spouse.
Family Names
- Marie Holmes writes at GoMag about how queer parents choose our own and our children’s last names. (For another aspect of queer family naming, see my decade-plus project collecting the names our children call us.)