Rhode Island legislators yesterday heard testimony in support of a bill that would streamline the process of confirmatory adoptions, ensuring that more LGBTQ families have access to this unfortunately necessary tool for protecting our legal ties to our children.
In Rhode Island, as in many states, the current adoption process “was written for the purpose of establishing parentage, not confirming it,” Jordan Budd, executive director of COLAGE and Rhode Island resident, testified to the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee. “For many people with LGBTQ+ parents who are donor-conceived, the legal relationship that is guaranteed for the birthing parent does not automatically exist for the non-gestational parent.” (If you need a refresher on why this is so, see this post.) Two recent cases in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania underscore how vulnerable the ties are between children and their nonbiological/nongestational parents in many states.
The adoption process in Rhode Island, however, “remains long, burdensome, and opaque,” as Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLAD, testified. “Numerous pleadings are required to waive various statutory requirements that have no bearing on these families such as the requirement for a six-month waiting period, the requirement of a home study, and the requirement of notice to other parents, among others.”
As parent Sabra L. Katz-Wise testified about the home study her family went through:
Even though we believed we were good parents and knew we were privileged as well-educated financially stable white professors, we were still a same-sex couple and wondered if there was a chance that the social worker might decide we weren’t suitable parents. We felt incredibly vulnerable during that visit.
The home visit was just one part of the lengthy expensive second-parent adoption process, which not only felt unnecessary since we were both on our child’s birth certificate, but also violated our privacy—especially when my wife was asked to answer personal questions about her childhood, have a physical exam, get finger printed, and submit letters of reference attesting to her parenting ability. Other steps also felt unnecessary, even ridiculous, like putting an ad in the paper for our anonymous donor, who didn’t know about our existence because he was anonymous.
The Rhode Island bill (H 5226/SB 121), would waive these requirements for both married and unmarried couples using assisted reproduction. (For unmarried couples, both parents must have consented to the assisted reproduction.) This would make it easier and faster for parents to secure confirmatory adoptions.
Rhode Island has already taken other important steps to protect children in the wide variety of families today. In 2020, it passed the Rhode Island Uniform Parentage Act (RIUPA), which updated the state’s parenting statutes to provide better protections and more accessible paths to parentage for children born via assisted reproduction to parents of any sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. Yet as Shelbi Day, chief policy officer of Family Equality, testified:
Many Rhode Islanders still seek adoption to protect their children out of state…. Given the increasingly hostile climate in many states, it is imperative that states like Rhode Island streamline processes for LGBTQ+ parents to get an adoption decree, which must be recognized and afforded full faith and credit in every state.
Lead sponsor Representative Rebecca Kislak (D) similarly said:
I’m hearing from terrified Rhode Island parents who are looking at what is happening around the country with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation targeting young people and court rulings ripping children away from parents who planned for, raised, and love them. Now we need to take this next step to make sure every parent and child can have the security of adoption so they can feel secure if they happen to move or even just visit family in states like Florida or Oklahoma that don’t have the protections we have here.
And Brett P. Smiley, mayor of Providence, likewise wrote in support of the bill:
As attacks on LGBTQ+ people escalate across the country, it is vital that our state does everything it can to protect our residents, while also ensuring that Rhode Island is a welcoming and inclusive place to start and grow a family.
An increasing number of states, including California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, have already taken similar steps to simplify confirmatory adoptions, and some additional states and jurisdictions allow courts to waive home studies on a case-by-case basis.
The Rhode Island legislation, along with a Connecticut bill to expand fertility care to be more inclusive of LGBTQ families, and a Massachusetts bill similar to RIUPA, which would at last bring Massachusetts parentage law into line with every other New England state, are among the important, state-level bills currently being advanced to better protect LGBTQ families.
If passed, the Rhode Island bill would become effective immediately. If you are a Rhode Island resident and would like to contribute your own testimony in support of this legislation, e-mail it to HouseJudiciary@rilegislture.gov.
Follow GLAD to keep updated on the Rhode Island bill and others throughout New England and see what else you can do to help.