An Oklahoma judge has vacated her earlier decision that ordered a nongestational mother removed from her child’s birth certificate. This means the mom can stay on the birth certificate, but still does not guarantee her parental rights. It’s a case all queer parents should note carefully.
A divorce case playing out in Oklahoma offers a frightening reminder of why nonbiological/nongestational parents in same-sex couples need to get confirmatory adoptions, court orders, or equivalents, even if they are married and on their children’s birth certificates.
It is many a queer parent’s nightmare: your child’s sperm donor sues for paternity. When it happened to Robin Young and Sandy Russo in 1991, it precipitated a landmark four-year court battle that indelibly marked 9-year-old Ry Russo-Young and her 11-year-old sister Cade. Yet Ry, now an award-winning filmmaker, had never really been able to process her feelings about what happened. Her attempt to do so, and to understand the other side of the story, led her to create Nuclear Family, a three-part documentary that premieres this Sunday on HBO.
In an article for the Boston Globe this past weekend, a queer mom reflects on talking with her daughter about her family structure and donor siblings, as well as the lessons this holds not only for her but for families of all types.
It’s International Lesbian Day, so let’s celebrate with the latest results from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running study on any LGBTQ-parent families. This summer, the project published a study of the relationships between the adult offspring of lesbian parents and their unknown or known donors.
A court in Mississippi has not only said a nonbiological mother has no parental rights over the child she helped to plan for, support, and raise with her ex-spouse, but that their anonymous sperm donor does. The mom, however, is fighting back.
Even though all states now recognize that married same-sex parents who have children through donor insemination are both parents to their children, a recent New York court decision highlights in detail why second-parent adoptions are still necessary. This is vital reading for all same-sex parents who have not yet done one.
A few entries to Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day this year raised the topic of discussing sperm and egg donors with children. Here’s what they had to say.
A seven- and a twelve-year-old, a world apart, have shared their views on being donor conceived. Listen to what they have to say.
I wrote at the beginning of November about an effort to publish Zak’s Safari: A Story about Donor-Conceived Kids of Two-Mom Families, a book for and about donor-conceived kids of two moms. I’m happy to report that (perhaps thanks to many of you) it’s been funded and the book is now available on Amazon.
