People never think what an impact this have on a child.

Quote:

...as if that isn't fraught with its own legal perils and difficulties.

This is why the health care situation as well as the legal system is clogged with nonsense cases like this. If you can't have a baby - ADOPT.

Fri, Jan. 1, 2010


Parental rights for surrogate N.J. woman bore another's eggs for gay male couple.

By Geoff Mulvihill
ASSOCIATED PRESS

A New Jersey woman who bore twins for her brother and his partner is the legal mother even though she is not genetically related to the children, a state Superior Court judge has ruled.

The babies Angelia Robinson gave birth to were conceived in a lab using eggs from an anonymous donor and sperm from Sean Hollingsworth, husband of Robinson's brother, Donald Robinson Hollingsworth.

Lawyers involved say that it's not the first case of its kind, but that it offers a glimpse into the complications that can arise from an emerging kind of surrogate parenthood increasingly used by gay male couples.

Judge Francis Schultz's ruling, made Dec. 23 in Jersey City and shared with the parties this week, relied heavily on the New Jersey State Supreme Court's two-decade-old ruling in the nation's best-known court case over surrogate rights, the Baby M case.

In that case, surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead's egg was used to conceive the child. Whitehead was found to be a parent and was granted visitation rights.

Schultz acknowledged the biological differences between the cases, but found that the central idea was the same. "There cannot be an irrevocable consent to an adoption in a private setting," he wrote.

In the current case, the girls were born in 2006 in an emergency cesarean section after a difficult pregnancy.

Under an agreement that Robinson signed before the fertilized eggs were implanted, the babies went to live with the Hollingsworths, who are registered as civil-union partners in New Jersey and are legally married in California.

Robinson later sued, saying she had been coerced into the surrogacy arrangement.

She did get visitation rights, and for most of the girls' lives they have split time between her home in Keansburg, Monmouth County, and that of her brother and his partner in Jersey City.

The next step in the legal case is a trial, expected in the spring, to determine custody. Robinson can seek primary custody because of the ruling.

The men's lawyer, Alan Modlinger, said the case highlighted the patchwork of state laws and court rulings across the country regarding gestational surrogacy, in which the egg comes from a woman not carrying the child. Some states allow it, some bar it, and some, like New Jersey, do not have laws that address it.

The trend nationally is toward allowing the practice, he said.

"We are obviously disappointed with the court's decision," Modlinger said. "This is an issue that is very important to infertile couples and gay couples in New Jersey."

He said his clients probably wouldn't decide whether to appeal until after the custody trial. They are willing to grant some visitation rights to Robinson, he said.

Robinson's lawyer, Harold Cassidy, who also represented Whitehead, the surrogate mother in the Baby M case, said this was a "fringe" case. Only 269 of the 4.3 million children born in the United States in 2006 were carried by gestational surrogates, he said.

"This is really about the rights of women and the welfare of children," Cassidy said. "Who the adults are who are trying to exploit women and create a baby for their own purposes is irrelevant."