Israel’s Attorney General recently ruled that the state should allow gay couples to adopt children. A new case, however, proves the limits of the state’s queer acceptance:
The state is opposed to allowing both partners in a lesbian couple to be registered as the biological mothers of their baby boy, even though one donated the egg and the other gave birth, the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office informed Tel Aviv District Court in a response released Sunday.
The brief, submitted by the state’s representative, Attorney Orly Manzur, came in response to a suit filed by the couple, whose names cannot be published, demanding that the Interior Ministry register both partners as the child’s biological mothers.
“Before approving the request for artificial insemination, the Health Ministry made it clear that the woman who donated the egg would not [automatically] be considered the child’s mother and that if she wanted to be, she would have to adopt him,” Manzur told the court
The women argue that joint legality will benefit the child’s mental and emotional stability, which sounds sound to us.
Stefano
When heterosexuals use a surrogate mother to carry the child conceived from assisted reproduction, is the surrogate mother AUTOMATICALLY considered a biological parent?
Stefano
Clarification…
With regard to my original question, I mean in those situations where the surrogate mother has been implanted with an already fertilized egg which the surrogate did not contribute.
M Shane
It seems to me that it would be important for a number of medical reasons to designate who imparted the genetic material to the offspring as being the “biological” as opossed to the “surrogate” mother, whether with straight or gay people.
I find it a little offensive when gay people go to bizzarre extremes to copy the heterosexual agenda. What is wrong with our own identity.
They don’t both become biological mothers because the baby doesn’t carry both of their genetic material. That would determine about the offspring, for instance, disease proclivities, who they could safely breed and not breed with. That distinction has to be made for the childs sake. Whatever you want to call it, both the surrogate and genetic mother do not play eqivalent parts in the babies biological outcome.
Indeed, the situation would be similar to the case of where if an artificial womb was constructed in a male, he might be the babies father but not the biological mother or both.
M Shane
Regardless of “biological” parentage, joint legal custody seems to be ok, although there would evolve a whole set of legal problems of what to do in the case of divorce. We all know that biological kinship has almost nothing to do with love.
Bitch Republic
I am shocked that they would say that the surrogate who birthed the child would be the mother, but not the one who is biologically related via DNA, having donated the egg. I would have thought it would be the reverse, at least.
leomoore
Everyone needs to keep in mind the case is in a different legal system and is not an American legal system. Many things are different in Israel. For instance, the government owns almost all the land and has a sort of lease arrangement with the person who owns the house. Mosaic law infuses Israeli law rather than Christian legal concepts which were heavily influenced by Roman and Greek legal systems. It’s actually closer in some respects to Sharia law from the Q’uran.
M Shane
Bitch Republic: thanks, I had that confused. I was assuming that the biological(genetic) mother would be the legal mother. That’s an odd and confusing way of seeing the matter. Another thing is that the child would not even look like her genetic mother, but her lover. and the laws proceeding from that would , I expect favor in divorce, the surrogate.
hells kitchen guy
“Mosaic law infuses Israeli law rather than Christian legal concepts which were heavily influenced by Roman and Greek legal systems. ”
wtf?!? it’s based on British common law.