This edition of the roundup covers progress in Minnesota, a step backwards in Louisiana, news from China, Denmark, and Italy, thoughtful pieces from a nonbinary and a trans parent, plus a few more items about LGBTQ parents that I haven’t covered separately!
Family Profiles
- Actor Ilana Glazer spoke with Them about how being pregnant helped them realize they are nonbinary.
- Gabrielle Bellot writes at Literary Hub about “The Joys and Fears of Trans Motherhood“—and queer parenthood more broadly at this particular point in American history.
Family Building
- Health insurer Aetna will now be covering intrauterine insemination (IUI) as a medical benefit for eligible plans, the first major insurer to offer such coverage nationally. The move comes after a class action lawsuit settled earlier this year, in which Aetna admitted improperly making LGBTQ policyholders pay more out of pocket than others for fertility services.
Politics and Law
- The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of two-mom couple Julianna and Catherine Sheridan, reports the Pioneer Press, affirming that their known sperm donor, who was seeking joint legal and physical custody, could not sue for paternity of their child under Minnesota law.
- A Louisiana court has ruled that a man is not the legal parent to the child he and his same-sex spouse had via gestational surrogacy, reports The Advocate. Ever since the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell granted same-sex couples the right to marry and the rights of marriage, all states should extend the marital presumption of parentage to them just as to different-sex couples, meaning that any child born to one spouse is be presumed to be the child of both spouses. The Louisiana Legislature, however, “has refused to tweak the lawbooks to clarify ambiguities surrounding same-sex marriage,” and “Louisiana lawmakers have also repeatedly declined to recognize the custodial rights of non-biological spouses in those relationships.”
- Some Alabama lawmakers are calling for additional clarifications to state laws around in vitro fertilization (IVF), although there is little agreement on exactly what that would look like, reports AL.com. After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled on February 16 that frozen embryos should be considered “children,” almost all IVF providers in the state immediately halted services, fearful of liability. Despite the fact that legislation was quickly passed to provide legal immunity to IVF providers and patients, some fertility clinics are still concerned that this does not go far enough to protect against the state’s definition of embryonic personhood, and are moving embryonic cells out of state to have them stored or potentially discarded.
- The Danish Ministry of Digital Government and Gender Equality has proposed measures to help LGBTQ families, reports The Local, including “simplification of processes for fertility treatment involving multi-parent families, an update to tax laws bringing inheritance tax from non-biological parents in line with biological ones, additional training on LGBTQ+ families and family planning for health sector staff and better guidance on family matters for LGBTQ+ parents.” It hopes to secure parliamentary backing and financing for the measures this fall.
- A court in China has recognized that a child can have two legal mothers, the first time such a ruling has been made in the country—but the ruling comes up short in really protecting the family. Didi and her now-estranged wife, who married in the U.S., used the wife’s eggs and donor sperm to create embryos, which both women carried, reports the Guardian. Each gave birth to a baby, but when they separated, the wife took both children and cut off contact with Didi. The court ruled that Didi must be allowed monthly visits with the child she carried, but not with the other one—a clearly imperfect solution that still keeps a parent from one of her children.
- The New York Times looks at moves by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy to further restrict LGBTQ people from forming and securing their families. The government wants to expand the prohibition on surrogacy to include Italians who undertake surrogacy abroad, even where it is legal, and has already asked municipalities to stop registering children born through surrogacy abroad as having two fathers. It is also appealing a court decision allowing parents to be identified as “parent” on their children’s IDs, instead of as “mother” and “father,” and is trying to remove at least 38 nongenetic mothers from their children’s birth certificates (as I reported earlier).
Flamingoes
- Curtis and Arthur, a male pair of Chilean flamingos at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England, have hatched a chick from an egg that was likely abandoned by another couple.