When Anthony Raftopol and his husband, Shawn Hargon Raftopol, had twins in April of 2008, the State of Connecticut would not allow both men’s names to appear on the birth certificates.
The children were conceived with Anthony’s sperm and a donor’s egg and carried by a gestational surrogate. The laws governing such situations vary among the 50 states, and Connecticut was one of the many that only recognized three kinds of parents: the couple whose baby is genetically related to both the mother and the father; the parent or parents who adopt; and the parents whose child is conceived through artificial insemination. In cases like the Raftopols, where one spouse sought parental status though they have no genetic link to the child, state law required them to go through the adoption process.
That leaves a gap for a nontraditional family, during which a child could technically be left an orphan should something happen to the genetic parent. The fact that the Raftopols, who are American citizens, currently live in Amsterdam for work, served to complicate their particular equation. As Anthony told ABC News:
I work in another country and am on the road a lot. Shawn travels with the children and it looked like he was literally trafficking children across the border. He travels with whole file documents just to show them he is not stealing the children from me.
Earlier this month, however, the Connecticut State Supreme Court ruled that couples who enter into a valid surrogacy agreement (the court called them “intended parents”) resulting in the birth of a child, are the legal parents of that child from birth, regardless of genetic connections.
New practices bring new laws, though one usually lags behind the other. Surrogacy has a particularly high profile lately; last month Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, had a baby via a surrogate, and this month Nicole Kidman and her husband, Keith Urban, did the same. But it is the names most of us have never heard who bring the real change. Like the Raftopols. Or the unnamed men who won the right to both be called parents in Australia last week.
The gay Melbourne couple had paid an Indian surrogate to carry twins conceived with the sperm of one of the men and an unidentified egg donor. Then they asked a family court to grant full parental status to the nongenetic father. In a national first, Justice Paul Cronin did so. “In this case, the children do not have the benefit of a mother, but they have the good fortune of having two fathers,” he wrote, according to the Herald Sun newspaper. “As a matter of law, the word ‘parent’ tends to suggest some biological connection, but … biology does not really matter; it is all about parental responsibility.”
DNA testing has led more men to discover that their children are not biologically theirs. Families are upended, and so is the law.
Parents are borrowing from Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, who is known for inspiring discipline, order and devotion.
