Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) yesterday signed “Marlo’s Law,” which will ensure critical legal protections for families formed via assisted reproduction and is named after the child of the bill’s co-prime sponsor, a lesbian mom. The Colorado legislature has also recently passed a bill ensuring that donor-conceived people have access to certain information about their sperm/egg donors.
I’m delighted to be part of a virtual panel on March 24th discussing the legal climate for queer and trans mothers, hosted by Our Family Coalition in partnership with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. I hope you’ll join us!
The Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA) would ensure that all children in the state, including those with LGBTQ parents, have equal access to the protections of legal parentage. While it had a hearing last November and has strong support, it still needs a push to become law, said advocates of the bill at a panel today.
Two queer couples and their children have become the first LGBTQ families to benefit from the Connecticut Parentage Act (CPA), which Connecticut Rep. Jeff Currey (D), the bill’s lead sponsor, said “may be the most impactful moment for LGBTQ families since marriage equality.”
In my recent “2021 Year in Review for LGBTQ Families,” I looked at what experts at some of the leading organizations fighting for LGBTQ families thought were the biggest wins and setbacks for our families in the past year. Now, they share what they see as our key legal and political goals for 2022 and what we must do to achieve them.
With 2021 drawing to a close, I asked experts at some of the leading organizations fighting for LGBTQ families what they thought were the key legal and political wins—and losses—for LGBTQ parents and our children over the past year. Here’s what they told me.
Queer parents, their children, LGBTQ and children’s rights advocates, and others told Massachusetts legislators Tuesday about the negative impact that the state’s outdated parentage laws have on people’s lives, and called for the state to update its statutes so that all children, including those born to LGBTQ parents, have equal access to legal parentage.
A Massachusetts bill that would better protect children born through assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and to unmarried same-sex parents will get a hearing next Tuesday, November 9. Learn more and find out how you can help all children have equal access to legal parentage!
Massachusetts, which led the nation in marriage equality, has fallen behind in protecting the children of LGBTQ parents. It is now the only New England state that has not comprehensively reformed its parentage laws to protect children regardless of the circumstances of their birth or the gender or marital status of their parents. The Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA), a bill now in the Legislature, could change that.
Maine has become the 10th state to allow LGBTQ couples, regardless of gender or genetic connection to their children, to establish legal parentage with an easy, free form that can be completed at the hospital right after a child’s birth. This form, unlike a birth certificate, is equivalent to a court decree.
