In which I argue that the insistence on "biological reality" being accurately recorded on birth certificates is blind to the biological reality that matters; that of motherhood.
Brilliant article. I agree. Since birth certificates are used to grant and deny certain freedoms and protections under law for parents and child, it makes sense to include some agency in who is named as a parent and stands to reason - in precisely the way you explain - that the mother should be the primary holder of that agency.
I read it while I was training and wrote in my head a long, computer-sciencey thing about what certification means and how it would work in practice to provide the freedoms and protections you propose.
But when I got in front of a keyboard I realised that:
a) It didn't add anything particularly useful to what you said, and
b) I'm literally the only person in the world interested in this kind of thing, these days.
So I won't. It was fun writing it in my head, though (for me).
This is breathtaking, it's an excellent article. One that is thought provoking and quite scary. I believe that the mother must be named on a birth certificate. Should a certificate reflect who will co parent a child? Is that rife with difficulties? Yes in certain cases it definitely is, and if the co parent leaves or divorces the primary parent does that negate the responsibility of that co parent? It's a minefield in certain cases. Do we just have a mother's name on the certificate? And then depend on her to tell the truth regarding the father, if she wishes to name one? Or do we penalise the mother by forcing her to name a father? This needs a lot of thought. I'm not sure technocrats should be allowed into this sphere as there could be legitimate reasons for not naming a father. I shall have to think on this gordian knot further
That's my point - it is very clear to me that the biological mother belongs on the birth certificate and that there should be a legal requirement that this should be accurate. The rest, you would need to think through very carefully before making anything a legal requirement for accuracy - but either way, whatever applies to lesbian couples should also apply to heterosexual ones.
This is a really thought provoking article, thank you Ceri. I too was thinking along the lines of an expanded birth certificate as a possibility. Or at least adding one of legal parent at birth alongside mother & father. Family composition has changed so much since birth certificates were introduced.
I was so shocked to read that you had to legally relinquish your own child and readopt them in order for your wife to be able to adopt. I thought adoption would be much simpler for step parents.
You said that the process has changed - is it easier now?
Women who conceive through PiV will usually know who the father is. Surprisingly, any women who conceives through artificial insemination will never know until a test is done. Even when the donor is supposed to be her husband:
"At least seven instances were identified in which Jacobson was the biological father of the patients' children, including one patient who was supposed to have been inseminated with sperm provided by her husband. DNA tests linked Jacobson to at least 15 such children, and it has been suspected that he fathered as many as 75 children by impregnating patients with his own sperm."
More over, women who lied on the birth certificate can navigate their children away from accidental incest. The above example, however, proves that even when a husband is supposed to be the donor, fraud or accidents may occur. No cheating required for the lie on the birth certificate. The couple, especially the mother, were under a false sense of security, and would have zero knowledge of any potential instances of incest before a test was done. What would have happened if no test was done?
What if their kid married one of their half siblings?
Keeping genetic fathers off the birth certificate, as well as protecting their anonymity, has already harmed many women, children, and families:
"The donor children have begun cataloging the ways their own paths have crossed, too. White went to Purdue at the same time as one of his half brothers. One sibling sold another a wagon at a garage sale. Two of them lived on the same street. Two had kids on the same softball team. They’re worried that their children are getting old enough to date soon. 'Did you not consider we all live in a relatively close area?' one sister said she has wondered about Cline. 'Did you really think … that we wouldn’t meet? That we wouldn’t maybe date? That we wouldn’t have kids who might date? Did you never consider that?' Cline now looms over their kids’ every innocent crush, their every prom date."
"The Dutch Donor Child Foundation determined that in addition to the 102 fathered via clinics, at least 80 additional children in the Netherlands were fathered via private arrangements.......The court determined that Meijer "deliberately misinformed" donation recipients about the number of children he had fathered. The court found that this creates a "huge kinship network, with hundreds of half-siblings" and that it is "sufficiently plausible" that the children could suffer negative psychosocial consequences as a result..........As of April 2023, he is estimated to have fathered between 550 and 600 children."
What would have happened if one of these men fathered their own grandchild through a clinic? What if one of the boys fathered their nieces and nephews? Do we ban all donor children from donating?
There's more than this three that have been discovered. But there are even more than them that haven't even been detected yet. If listing the sperm donor was a requirement, and a test was also required, these men would have been caught sooner.
But with all that being said... why can't we fight for expanded birth certificates? Here's an example:
-Genetic Mother (egg): Alice Baker
-Genetic Father (sperm): Charlie Dane
-Surrogate: N/A
-Legal Parent At Birth: Alice Baker
-Legal Parent At Birth: Erica Baker
This is both accurate for health & consanguinity issues and still recognizes who the legal parents are. Right now, listing donors on the certificate is one of the best ways to protect the women and children victimized by these men. It's the best way of preventing inbreeding.
Reality (or as close as we can get to it) is not bigoted and is always worth defending.
Thanks for taking the time to leave this comment. I agree with you about the state of record keeping in clinics. In the UK at least, there is a requirement that each donor can only help make ten families, but even this feels like a lot. Both my children can find out who the donor is when they are 18, as can all the other children born to that donor. This, I hope, should protect them.
I think if you have a "legal parent at birth" category, it undermines the importance of the mother/child bond and suggests that surrogacy is, at worst, morally neutral and supported by the state. I am not in favour of this.
The only thing that's clear to me is that the birth certificate should have an accurate record of the mother - the woman who gave birth to the child - and that the woman who gave birth should be able to use the certificate to confer legal rights. I don't see how it can be made a legal requirement that the other adult is the biological father.
This is the basic thinking in the UK; it is a crime to falsely record a mother, but not to falsely record a father/second parent. There is a certain amount of acceptance that the birth certificate reflects biological reality for mothers, and to a lesser degree, for fathers. And i think that's reflective of biological reality - most women in history could not prove for certain that the man who fathered their child, fathered their child.
> there is a requirement that each donor can only help make ten families
“Donors must sign an agreement with their clinic that they don’t donate sperm at other clinics,” Gerrit-Jan KleinJan wrote. “The sperm donor you are writing about made this agreement as well. Nevertheless, he donated at more sperm banks resulting in 102 babies.”
Before the age of 18, donor children can unknowingly date, sleep with, and have a child with their half sibling. Rates of teenage pregnancy are currently low (thankfully) but can never be truly eradicated.
>I think if you have a "legal parent at birth" category, it undermines the importance of the mother/child bond
This part of an expanded birth certificate includes cases of girls/women/couples deciding to give up their children for adoption during pregnancy and finding a match before birth. The match could be a heterosexual couple, a homosexual couple, a single woman, or a single man.
A single woman adopting from a teenage couple in trouble would look like:
-Genetic Mother (egg): Alice Baker
-Genetic Father (sperm): Charles Day
-Surrogate: N/A
-Legal Parent: Erica Flowers
-Legal Parent: N/A
"Surrogate" is the term more people recognize which is why I used it. I'm against all surrogacy, including "altruistic", except in cases of women married to each other (i.e. Alice donates to her wife and her wife gestates). Any law protecting women from commercial and "altruistic" surrogacy will be enacted while surrogates are pregnant. Acknowledging them is important.
Listing the genetic father should at least be made legal and mandatory in cases of artificial insemination to prevent the examples I previously listed. This is evidence based and will help prevent further men from doing this. It also helps prevent incest & inbreeding as it can more easily be traced and cases of incest can be alerted.
>most women in history could not prove for certain that the man who fathered their child, fathered their child
But we can prove it now. And we should use it to prevent incest between siblings.
>I don't see how it can be made a legal requirement that the other adult is the biological father.
It will become a legal requirement for donor conceived children the moment lawsuits start. An expanded birth certificate will include the names of both the genetic and legal parents.
>This is the basic thinking in the UK; it is a crime to falsely record a mother, but not to falsely record a father/second parent
Sometimes the law does not foresee certain situations and laws can be changed. And the new law will be for donor conceived children as that can be traced. It’s also important to realize that women who conceive through donors will never truly know the father of the child until a test is done.
Again, a woman thought she was artificially inseminated with her husband’s sperm. After a phone call, her family decided to do a paternity test. Not only was the husband not the father, her child now had 90+ siblings. If she hadn’t been alerted, her child could’ve dated one of their siblings. Her grandchild could’ve been inbred.
The incest crisis communities are facing are caused by donors, clinics, and a lack of legal oversight that allow men to act wanton with their sperm to the point of incest. A law that all newborn donor conceived children be tested against the donor (including when the donor is the husband) will be necessary.
I would also like to make a certain point: I am fighting for the right of children to not unwittingly commit incest. This is biological reality.
We both are fighting for the right of women & girls to have exclusive spaces and sports. That is biological reality.
Both are fought for with reality-accurate documents.
Oh I just read Kathleen Stock’s article and it has answered my question. Since 2009 it has been possible to name a co-parent on the birth certificate. That’s perfect. That’s how it should stay 😊
Brilliant article. I agree. Since birth certificates are used to grant and deny certain freedoms and protections under law for parents and child, it makes sense to include some agency in who is named as a parent and stands to reason - in precisely the way you explain - that the mother should be the primary holder of that agency.
I read it while I was training and wrote in my head a long, computer-sciencey thing about what certification means and how it would work in practice to provide the freedoms and protections you propose.
But when I got in front of a keyboard I realised that:
a) It didn't add anything particularly useful to what you said, and
b) I'm literally the only person in the world interested in this kind of thing, these days.
So I won't. It was fun writing it in my head, though (for me).
Aw fanks.
😂😂😂 At the science fiction, glad to have inspired you.
This is breathtaking, it's an excellent article. One that is thought provoking and quite scary. I believe that the mother must be named on a birth certificate. Should a certificate reflect who will co parent a child? Is that rife with difficulties? Yes in certain cases it definitely is, and if the co parent leaves or divorces the primary parent does that negate the responsibility of that co parent? It's a minefield in certain cases. Do we just have a mother's name on the certificate? And then depend on her to tell the truth regarding the father, if she wishes to name one? Or do we penalise the mother by forcing her to name a father? This needs a lot of thought. I'm not sure technocrats should be allowed into this sphere as there could be legitimate reasons for not naming a father. I shall have to think on this gordian knot further
That's my point - it is very clear to me that the biological mother belongs on the birth certificate and that there should be a legal requirement that this should be accurate. The rest, you would need to think through very carefully before making anything a legal requirement for accuracy - but either way, whatever applies to lesbian couples should also apply to heterosexual ones.
This is a really thought provoking article, thank you Ceri. I too was thinking along the lines of an expanded birth certificate as a possibility. Or at least adding one of legal parent at birth alongside mother & father. Family composition has changed so much since birth certificates were introduced.
I was so shocked to read that you had to legally relinquish your own child and readopt them in order for your wife to be able to adopt. I thought adoption would be much simpler for step parents.
You said that the process has changed - is it easier now?
CTRL + F: "Incest" "Inbreeding" "Consanguinity"
Results: 0
Women who conceive through PiV will usually know who the father is. Surprisingly, any women who conceives through artificial insemination will never know until a test is done. Even when the donor is supposed to be her husband:
"At least seven instances were identified in which Jacobson was the biological father of the patients' children, including one patient who was supposed to have been inseminated with sperm provided by her husband. DNA tests linked Jacobson to at least 15 such children, and it has been suspected that he fathered as many as 75 children by impregnating patients with his own sperm."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Jacobson
More over, women who lied on the birth certificate can navigate their children away from accidental incest. The above example, however, proves that even when a husband is supposed to be the donor, fraud or accidents may occur. No cheating required for the lie on the birth certificate. The couple, especially the mother, were under a false sense of security, and would have zero knowledge of any potential instances of incest before a test was done. What would have happened if no test was done?
What if their kid married one of their half siblings?
Keeping genetic fathers off the birth certificate, as well as protecting their anonymity, has already harmed many women, children, and families:
"The donor children have begun cataloging the ways their own paths have crossed, too. White went to Purdue at the same time as one of his half brothers. One sibling sold another a wagon at a garage sale. Two of them lived on the same street. Two had kids on the same softball team. They’re worried that their children are getting old enough to date soon. 'Did you not consider we all live in a relatively close area?' one sister said she has wondered about Cline. 'Did you really think … that we wouldn’t meet? That we wouldn’t maybe date? That we wouldn’t have kids who might date? Did you never consider that?' Cline now looms over their kids’ every innocent crush, their every prom date."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Cline
Even entire communities are now effected:
"The Dutch Donor Child Foundation determined that in addition to the 102 fathered via clinics, at least 80 additional children in the Netherlands were fathered via private arrangements.......The court determined that Meijer "deliberately misinformed" donation recipients about the number of children he had fathered. The court found that this creates a "huge kinship network, with hundreds of half-siblings" and that it is "sufficiently plausible" that the children could suffer negative psychosocial consequences as a result..........As of April 2023, he is estimated to have fathered between 550 and 600 children."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Jacob_Meijer
What would have happened if one of these men fathered their own grandchild through a clinic? What if one of the boys fathered their nieces and nephews? Do we ban all donor children from donating?
There's more than this three that have been discovered. But there are even more than them that haven't even been detected yet. If listing the sperm donor was a requirement, and a test was also required, these men would have been caught sooner.
But with all that being said... why can't we fight for expanded birth certificates? Here's an example:
-Genetic Mother (egg): Alice Baker
-Genetic Father (sperm): Charlie Dane
-Surrogate: N/A
-Legal Parent At Birth: Alice Baker
-Legal Parent At Birth: Erica Baker
This is both accurate for health & consanguinity issues and still recognizes who the legal parents are. Right now, listing donors on the certificate is one of the best ways to protect the women and children victimized by these men. It's the best way of preventing inbreeding.
Reality (or as close as we can get to it) is not bigoted and is always worth defending.
Thanks for taking the time to leave this comment. I agree with you about the state of record keeping in clinics. In the UK at least, there is a requirement that each donor can only help make ten families, but even this feels like a lot. Both my children can find out who the donor is when they are 18, as can all the other children born to that donor. This, I hope, should protect them.
I think if you have a "legal parent at birth" category, it undermines the importance of the mother/child bond and suggests that surrogacy is, at worst, morally neutral and supported by the state. I am not in favour of this.
The only thing that's clear to me is that the birth certificate should have an accurate record of the mother - the woman who gave birth to the child - and that the woman who gave birth should be able to use the certificate to confer legal rights. I don't see how it can be made a legal requirement that the other adult is the biological father.
This is the basic thinking in the UK; it is a crime to falsely record a mother, but not to falsely record a father/second parent. There is a certain amount of acceptance that the birth certificate reflects biological reality for mothers, and to a lesser degree, for fathers. And i think that's reflective of biological reality - most women in history could not prove for certain that the man who fathered their child, fathered their child.
I apologize for the late reply.
> there is a requirement that each donor can only help make ten families
“Donors must sign an agreement with their clinic that they don’t donate sperm at other clinics,” Gerrit-Jan KleinJan wrote. “The sperm donor you are writing about made this agreement as well. Nevertheless, he donated at more sperm banks resulting in 102 babies.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/health/sperm-donor-fertility-meijer.html
>find out who the donor is when they are 18
Before the age of 18, donor children can unknowingly date, sleep with, and have a child with their half sibling. Rates of teenage pregnancy are currently low (thankfully) but can never be truly eradicated.
>I think if you have a "legal parent at birth" category, it undermines the importance of the mother/child bond
This part of an expanded birth certificate includes cases of girls/women/couples deciding to give up their children for adoption during pregnancy and finding a match before birth. The match could be a heterosexual couple, a homosexual couple, a single woman, or a single man.
A single woman adopting from a teenage couple in trouble would look like:
-Genetic Mother (egg): Alice Baker
-Genetic Father (sperm): Charles Day
-Surrogate: N/A
-Legal Parent: Erica Flowers
-Legal Parent: N/A
"Surrogate" is the term more people recognize which is why I used it. I'm against all surrogacy, including "altruistic", except in cases of women married to each other (i.e. Alice donates to her wife and her wife gestates). Any law protecting women from commercial and "altruistic" surrogacy will be enacted while surrogates are pregnant. Acknowledging them is important.
Listing the genetic father should at least be made legal and mandatory in cases of artificial insemination to prevent the examples I previously listed. This is evidence based and will help prevent further men from doing this. It also helps prevent incest & inbreeding as it can more easily be traced and cases of incest can be alerted.
>most women in history could not prove for certain that the man who fathered their child, fathered their child
But we can prove it now. And we should use it to prevent incest between siblings.
>I don't see how it can be made a legal requirement that the other adult is the biological father.
It will become a legal requirement for donor conceived children the moment lawsuits start. An expanded birth certificate will include the names of both the genetic and legal parents.
>This is the basic thinking in the UK; it is a crime to falsely record a mother, but not to falsely record a father/second parent
Sometimes the law does not foresee certain situations and laws can be changed. And the new law will be for donor conceived children as that can be traced. It’s also important to realize that women who conceive through donors will never truly know the father of the child until a test is done.
Again, a woman thought she was artificially inseminated with her husband’s sperm. After a phone call, her family decided to do a paternity test. Not only was the husband not the father, her child now had 90+ siblings. If she hadn’t been alerted, her child could’ve dated one of their siblings. Her grandchild could’ve been inbred.
The incest crisis communities are facing are caused by donors, clinics, and a lack of legal oversight that allow men to act wanton with their sperm to the point of incest. A law that all newborn donor conceived children be tested against the donor (including when the donor is the husband) will be necessary.
I would also like to make a certain point: I am fighting for the right of children to not unwittingly commit incest. This is biological reality.
We both are fighting for the right of women & girls to have exclusive spaces and sports. That is biological reality.
Both are fought for with reality-accurate documents.
Oh I just read Kathleen Stock’s article and it has answered my question. Since 2009 it has been possible to name a co-parent on the birth certificate. That’s perfect. That’s how it should stay 😊
https://unherd.com/2023/07/lesbian-mothers-should-be-on-birth-certificates/