Marriage and Parenthood

There’s a post by Mombian up at the Washington Post this morning that’s made me think again about the connections drawn between parenthood and marriage.   It’s worth a read and worth some thought.  

The post is essentially an argument about the importance of marriage rights for children of lesbian and gay couples.   It’s an equation that troubles me a little for a couple of reasons.   I’ve written frequently about the ways in which the question of access to marriage for same-sex couples has become interwoven with the well-being of children.   It is still, however, momentarily startling to me to see the power people grant to law in their lives. 

I don’t mean to sound like a total skeptic about the importance of law.   It should be clear, for example, that I believe legal recognition of a person’s status as a parent is absolutely critical.   But once a child has two legally recognized parents, why is it so important that the state also validate the relationship between the parents?  

Egg Buying, II

The story I blogged about a week-and-a-half ago has finally reached the NY Times.   (This is the one about NY state now paying women to donate eggs for stem cell research.) 

The story prompted me to return to this thread for a moment.  As the NY Times makes clear, for some the concern about buying the eggs is that women will give their eggs for other than altruistic reasons. 

This suggests two distinctions are being drawn–first, between altruistic and non-altruistic behavior, and second, between donating eggs for IVF as opposed to donating eggs for research.  It’s apparently okay to donate eggs for IVF no matter what your motivation but, at least for some people, it’s only okay to donate eggs for research for altruistic reasons.  

Missouri Lesbian Parents, II: Other Perspectives

This is picking up on yesterday’s post, so you might wish to start there.   The case I discussed there was from Missouri and concerned a lesbian couple who started a family, each gave birth to a child using a common donor, and then split up.  As sometimes seems to happen, one woman (Michelle White) claimed the right to completely exclude the other (Leslea White) from the life of the child she had given birth to.  (The child is identified as “CEW.”)   In the opinion just released, the Missouri appellate court acceded to this request.  

I imagine this was the aim that Michelle wished to accomplish.   But there are several other things that follow from this.  It seems to me nearly inevitable that Michelle White has also withdrawn entirely from the life of the child that Leslea gave birth to.   (This child is identified as “ZAW.”)  Although Leslea is willing to have Michelle continue a relationship with ZAW, it’s pretty hard to see how Michelle could do that consistent with her contention that Leslea can have no relationship with CEW.   From both a practical and a legal standpoint, the two positions are nearly impossible to reconcile.  

Lesbian Mothers in Missouri–Siblings Sundered

There’s a new case out of Missouri that falls into the regrettable category of intra-lesbian disputes about parental status.   To recap, these are cases where lesbians who have been raising a child split up and argue not simply about who should have how much time with the child (that’s a simple custody case) but about whether or not both women are actually parents of the child.   

Typically one woman has given birth, and so she is clearly a parent.  The question focuses on the parental status of her former partner.  If that woman is not a parent, then in all likelihood she will have no further contact with the child.   That’s the power of parental rights–You get to decide who the child spends time with.    If she is a parent, then she is entitled to have that custody fight I mentioned above.  

(These problems can be entirely avoided when the second woman obtains legal recognition of her status as a parent in advance of any trouble.  The most common way to do this is through a second-parent adoption, which you can also find discussed frequently here.)      

A Few Further Thoughts on Father’s Day

As I read through the New York Times this past Sunday I was impressed with the pervasiveness of the Father’s Day theme. Virtually every section of the paper  I picked up seemed to have at least one Father’s Day themed article—sports, business, style, and op-ed.  The Style section alone had two Father’s Day articles, plus a column reviewing a couple of books around single-motherhood thrown in for good measure.  

The pieces that struck me most were a pair of essays in the News of the Week by John S. and Jason Burnett, who are father and son.   They were separated for 27 years—from the time Jason was 10 to the time he was 37.   Though the essays are a bit sketchy on historical detail, it’s clear that John Burnet left his family.   He says, “I bolted down to the Brooklyn docks and signed on a merchant ship.”  

On Father’s Day

On Mother’s Day I wrote about gendered parenthood and it seems only fair to do the same on Father’s Day.   But before I do that, I’ll start with a nod towards all the families with kids and no fathers.  

I’m thinking here of single-mother households and lesbian mother households (and yes, they overlap.)   Just as Mother’s Day creates a minor crises for motherless families, so Father’s Day creates a crises for fatherless ones. 

Schools have become more accommodating though, offering the opportunity to make a Father’s Day project for a grandfather, an uncle, or any other significant male figure.   The key, of course, is that the recipient must be a man.  

Postumous Fathers and Social Security

There’s a recent Ninth Circuit case that deals with a problem that comes up with some regularity, even if you wouldn’t call it common.  (The opinion goes into a lot of detail, but you can find a reasonable press account of it here.)   

The basic question is whether a child conceived using frozen sperm after the death of the man who was the source of the sperm can be considered to be the child of that man for purposes of obtaining social security benefits.  It’s not the specific answer the Ninth Circuit gives here that I want to talk about.  I’m interested in thinking about how we ought to approach that problem.

The basic facts are simple.  Gabriela and Bruce Vernoff were married.   He died unexpectedly in July, 1995.   Gabriela got a doctor to collect sperm after his death and had it frozen.

The Ethics of Buying Eggs

Here’s a little news tidbit that is making me think.  New York State will now pay women to donate eggs for embryonic stem cell research.  No other state does this.   All other states recruit women to donate for free.  And according to the article, this is not terribly successful. 

The first thing I wonder about is whether there is some meaningful difference between paying women to donate eggs and buying the eggs.   The former is the formulation used in the article.   But is that any different from the latter?  

To the extent one sees this as a moral issue (and I think that is what the discussion here is primarily about) does it matter how you characterize it? 

Lesbian and Gay Parents and the Luck of the Draw

Not long ago, I wrote about the ways in which lesbian and gay families live on patchwork quilt when it comes to legal recognition of their families.   If you look over last few posts you can see what I meant:  The legal entitlements of lesbian and gay parents vary enormously depending on the location of the family in question.  

But of course, on several levels, where a lesbian or gay parent lives is the result of chance.    First there is the chance of where you were born or grow up or where your home turns out to be.   You could read the cases about lesbians mothers living in Louisiana and you can wonder what they are doing there–couldn’t they guess Louisiana would be rather inhospitable?  

Lesbian Mothers in Louisiana

Yesterday I wrote about how courts are sometimes more inclined to respond to the individual equity claims of lesbian families than legislatures might be.   But alas, the key word there is “sometimes.”   Courts are not always affirming.   It’s probably not surprising that this seems to be particularly true when the challenge to a lesbian family comes from within that family.  

There is yet another case that I am sorry to say is an of a lesbian refusing to recognize the relationship between her former partner and their child.   (I’m sorry to say that I’ve commented on many similar cases in the past year-and-a-half.  Here’s one, and many of them are collected under the tag “second-parent.)  This case was brought in Lousiana, and given the response of Louisiana in the birth certificate case, the opinion probably shouldn’t be surprising.