The Law of Parenting

At least in Maryland, if not in most other states, the regarding parental rights and responsibilities is getting mroe complicated. As new technology advances regarding reproduction, the various parties and the various laws are getting rewritten. On Mayland case actually involved five people in the birth of one child, a barren couple looking to have a baby, a sperm donor, an egg donor and a gestational mother. Under old laws, each of these people may have been afforded rights and responsbilities for the child.

Yesterday, the Maryland Court of Appeals handed down a decision which in effect means that a baby may have no legal mother, although it does have not one but two biological mothers (and egg donor and a gestational mother). To say the matter is complicated would be an understatement. The Baltimore Sun has a summary of the case:

But in the Maryland case settled yesterday, lawyer Dorrance D. Dickens represented the man who wanted to be a biological father. Absent a female partner, he arranged to create a child of his own with donated eggs from one woman and gestation provided by another.

Holy Cross Hospital placed the surrogate on the birth certificate as the mother.

When the man and the surrogate sought a court order to remove her from the birth certificate - a process that Dickens said typically goes smoothly - the judge balked, saying even though other judges sign off, he didn't see any authority in the law to do that. The man, identified in court records as Roberto d.B. appealed.

The egg donor was not involved in the case.

The Court of Appeals took the case, leapfrogging the intermediate appeals courts, which it often does when cases have broad impact or involve novel issues.

Paternity laws "date back to when the person giving birth had to be the mother," said Jana B. Singer, a University of Maryland law professor specializing in family and constitutional law.

In this case, Bell wrote that under the Equal Rights Amendment, paternity laws apply equally to men and women.

Just as a man can refuse to be the parent of a child to whom he has no genetic ties, so can a woman, Bell said.

"The paternity statute, as applied to men, and now, as to women, merely establishes that the process by which men can challenge paternity can now be employed by women," he wrote.

"She had a reasonable expectation that her role in the lives of these children would terminate upon delivery of the children, and that the faithful performance of her duties under the agreement would not permanently impact her life, nor the lives of her family," Bell wrote.

Three appellate judges disagreed with the majority.

Judge Dale R. Cathell dissented, saying the majority fashioned a "strained interpretation" of the law that could lead to contracts in which people contract to create a baby but opt out of all responsibility for the child.

I have not read the full decision which can be found here. In re Roberto d. B.