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Queering America's Heteronormative Family Law through “Well-Conceived” Legislation (Or, Genetic Parents Exist and Sometimes Your Kid Might Want to Know Them)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2021
Abstract
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- Notes & Recent Case Developments
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- Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and Boston University 2020
References
1 Members of the LGBT community use a diversity of terms to describe themselves, and this Note uses phrases like “LGBT,” “queer,” “same-sex” and “same-gender” somewhat interchangeably. See infra notes 7-17 and accompanying text.
2 See generally, NeJaime, Douglas, The Nature of Parenthood, 126 Yale L.J. 2260 (2017)Google Scholar [hereinafter Nature of Parenthood].
3 Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2590 (2015) (“Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples.”); United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744, 772 (2013) (describing how the Defense of Marriage Act “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples” by “mak[ing] it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives”). Following Windsor, federal appellate courts echoed Kennedy's concern about the humiliation of children whose same-sex parents were excluded in states that banned same-sex marriage. See, e.g., Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 659 (7th Cir. 2014).
4 See Naomi Cahn, The New Kinship: Constructing Donor-Conceived Families 117-19 (2013) [hereinafter New Kinship] (discussing the risk of incest among donor offspring); see also Jacqueline Mroz, One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring, N.Y. Times (Sept. 5, 2011), https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html [https://perma.cc/39T3-PYCF] (noting many sperm banks do not regulate how many times an individual donor can provide genetic samples).
5 Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075 (2017); Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996).
6 For a summary of various child-related arguments framed by LGBT rights activists, see Polikoff, Nancy D., Marriage as Blindspot: What Children with LGBT Parents Need Now, in After Marriage Equality: The Future of LGBT Rights, 127, 131-41 (Carlos A. Ball ed., 2016)Google Scholar.
7 See Unif. Parentage Act (Unif. Law Comm'n 2017).
8 See Parentage Act, Unif. Law Comm’n, https://www.uniformlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=c4f37d2d-4d20-4be0-8256-22dd73af068f [https://perma.cc/PP2G-G7A9] (last visited Feb. 7, 2020).
9 William Lutz, The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone is Saying Anymore 72 (1996).
10 New Kinship, supra note 4, at 7.
11 Id. at 7.
12 Id.
13 Id. at 9.
14 Lambda Legal, the oldest national legal organization for the LGBT community, goes so far as to provide a helpful glossary, defining several of the communities it serves. Glossary, Lambda Legal, https://www.lambdalegal.org/protected-and-served/glossary [https://perma.cc/2VCZ-7K6W] (last visited Feb. 7, 2020).
15 See, e.g., Polikoff, supra note 6, at 129 (referring variously to “same-sex couples” and “gay and lesbian parents”); Appell, Annette R., Controlling for Kin: Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, 25 Wis. J.L. Gender, & Soc'y 73, 99 (2010)Google Scholar [hereinafter Ghosts in the Postmodern Family] (referring to “lesbians and gays”); Dixon Weaver, Jessica, The Changing Tides of Adoption: Why Marriage, Race, and Family Identity Still Matter, 71 S.M.U. L. Rev. 159, 175-76 (2018)Google Scholar [hereinafter Changing Tides] (referring to “homosexual marriage” and “LGBT activists”).
16 See Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2290-91 (discussing the marital presumption). The child born into a marriage may be presumed to be the child of both its biological mother and her spouse, but the same presumption does not apply in a marriage of two gay cisgender men. Additionally, I assume the marital presumption would also apply if the married parent giving birth to the child was a transgender man or a non-binary person, but I have not seen any sources that address this directly.
17 According to the Human Rights Campaign, bisexuals constitute “the single largest group within the LGBTQ community.” Bisexual FAQ, Human Rights Campaign, https://www.hrc.org/resources/bisexual-faq [https://perma.cc/F49B-VEL3] (last visited Mar. 24, 2019). Despite this, the word bisexual does not appear in any of the major Supreme Court cases that deal with LGBT rights except for Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 574 (2003); Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 624 (1996). In this Note, I use the phrase “heterosexual parents” only when I really do mean “straight parents.” But it may be worth acknowledging that in the eyes of the law—which is often hyper-focused on the binary gender of parents—a queer or bisexual couple sometimes looks like, and in some respects may even be treated like, a straight couple. This reality doesn't take away the nuances of the bisexual experience, which go beyond the scope of this Note.
18 The literal meaning of the phrase “same-sex” erases anyone who is non-binary. Gender is a spectrum, so even a relationship between two non-binary people is not necessarily a same-sex relationship. Likewise, a lesbian couple where both partners are transgender women would likely not be able to avail themselves of the marital parentage presumption, because neither partner is able to bear a child in the context of the marriage.
19 Courtney G. Joslin's use of “nonbirth parent” and “gestational parent” is helpful in distinguishing relevant roles without needing to gender anyone. See Joslin, Courtney G., Protecting Children: Marriage, Gender, and Assisted Reproductive Technology, 83 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1117, 1225-26 (2010)Google Scholar [hereinafter Protecting Children].
20 Polikoff, supra note 6, at 131-41.
21 Id. at 128; see also Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015); United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013).
22 In this context, the phrase “heterosexual relationship” may also encompass “different-gender relationship”—for example, a relationship between a man and a woman, one of whom might be queer. Polikoff, supra note 6, at 128-29. Additionally, “LGBT people of color are substantially more likely to be raising children than their White counterparts, and they are significantly more likely to be living in or close to poverty.” Id. at 128.
23 See generally Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. at 2584; Windsor, 570 U.S. at 744.
24 Same-sex female couples may also choose to conceive children via “reciprocal in vitro fertilization,” where the partner who does not provide genetic material carries the child—thus ensuring that both partners “will each have a biological connection to their child, [even though] only one member of the couple will have a genetic connection.” Feinberg, Jessica, A Logical Step Forward: Extending Voluntary Acknowledgments of Parentage to Female Same-Sex Couples, 30 Yale J.L. & Feminism 99, 102 n.10 (2018)Google Scholar. Queer families may also have children who are genetically related to both parents if one or both parents are transgender. See id at 101 n.2.
25 See generally Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2.
26 Polikoff, supra note 6, at 130; Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2339.
27 Joslin, Courtney G., Nurturing Parenthood Through the UPA (2017), 127 Yale L.J.F. 583, 595 (2018)Google Scholar [hereinafter Nurturing Parenthood].
28 Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2291 (“Men in same-sex couples find themselves in the same position as women in different-sex couples. Neither can attain parentage by virtue of marriage to the biological father, and both struggle for parental recognition in the absence of a biological connection to the child.”).
29 Nurturing Parenthood, supra note 27, at 595.
30 NeJaime, Douglas, The Constitution of Parenthood, 72 Stan. L. Rev. 15 (forthcoming 2020)Google Scholar [hereinafter Constitution of Parenthood].
31 See, e.g., Russell v. Pasik, 178 So. 3d 55 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015). Not all straight families are created equal, either. Race, marital status, and economic status all factor heavily in the way families are helped or harmed by the state—with the burden falling disproportionately on low income queer parents of color.
32 Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2293.
33 Id. at 2293. Queer parentage scholarship often discusses this process in terms of birth mothers and their spouses; but this also applies when the parent giving birth is not a woman.
34 See generally Feinberg, supra note 24.
35 Polikoff, supra note 6, at 135-36.
36 Id. at 145.
37 Id. at 141-42.
38 Protecting Children, supra note 19, at 1214.
39 Id. at 1202-03 (citing State ex rel. D.R.M., 34 P.3d 887 (Wash. Ct. App. 2001)).
40 Id. at 1203.
41 D.R.M., 34 P.3d at 892.
42 Id. (“[T]he application of provisions of the UPA to the facts of this case, changing only Wood's gender, would yield the same result.”).
43 Id. at 892-93.
44 See State v. Base, 126 P.3d 79, 83 (Wash. Ct. App. 2006) (“In Washington, both biological parents have an obligation to support their children regardless of marital status.”) (citing Linda D. v. Fritz C., P.2d 223, (Wash. Ct. App. 1984)). Washington recently adopted the UPA (2017), so although this case hasn't been explicitly overturned, it might not be good law going forward.
45 Protecting Children, supra note 19, at 1199.
46 A.H. v. M.P., 857 N.E.2d 1061, 1065 (Mass. 2006); Protecting Children, supra note 19, at 1208.
47 A.G.R. v. D.R.H., No. FD-09-001838-07, 2009 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 3250 (Super. Ct. Ch. Div. Dec. 23, 2009); Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2330.
48 A.G.R., 2009 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 3250, at *2.
49 Id. at *2.
50 As the court noted, in 2009, the New Jersey legislature made no provision for gestational surrogates. Id. But this changed on May 30, 2018, when Governor Phil Murphy signed the New Jersey Gestational Carrier Agreement Act [S482] into law. Under the new law, gestational carrier agreements are now legally enforceable, as long as they fulfill certain stipulations. Most importantly, the “gestational carrier” must be “a woman who does not make use of her own egg.” N.J. Stat. Ann. § 9:17-60 (West 2018).
51 A.G.R., 2009 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 3250, at *10.
52 Id. at *8.
53 Id. at *9.
54 Id.
55 Id. at *13.
56 Following the same statutory analysis used by the In re Baby M court, the A.G.R. court concluded that the silence of the New Jersey Parentage Act “as to acknowledging surrogacy agreements … suggested that the Legislature chose not to recognize surrogacy.” Id. at *8. But silence is not an explicit statutory scheme.
57 Patricia Byrn, Mary & Giddings, Lisa, An Empirical Analysis of the Use of the Intent Test to Determine Parentage in Assisted Reproductive Technology Cases, 50 Hous. L. Rev. 1295, 1301 (2013)Google Scholar.
58 Id. at 1296.
59 Id.
60 Johnson v. Calvert, 851 P.2d 776, 782 (Cal. 1993); Byrn & Giddings, supra note 57, at 1296.
61 Protecting Children, supra note 19, at 1183 (“The most appropriate solution is to apply the consent = legal parent rule to all children born through artificial insemination, regardless of the marital status, gender, or sexual orientation of the participants.”). The consent = legal parent rule seems to have originated with Joslin; when NeJaime takes it up and advocates for its use, he attributes it to her. See Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2345.
62 Protecting Children, supra note 19, at 1223.
63 Id. at 1223. This argument is advanced to support the reasonableness of a consent rule in the context of ART; obviously, some couples very much intend to get pregnant when they have sexual intercourse.
64 Id. at 1224 (quoting Schultz, Marjory, Reproductive Technology and Intent-Based Parenthood: An Opportunity for Gender Neutrality, 1990 Wis. L. Rev. 297, 324)Google Scholar.
65 There are obvious concerns about how this could be verified or enforced. Some scholars believe that intentional parenthood, unlike functional parenthood, is a type of parenthood that does not depend on the permission of a legally recognized parent. See Storrow, Richard, Parenthood by Pure Intention: Assisted Reproduction and the Functional Approach to Parentage, 53 Hastings L.J. 597, 677 (2002)Google Scholar. But as Joslin points out, a rule that does not require consent of the gestational parent would be untenable, because under a contrary rule, the gestational/intended parent would have no control over who would be her child's other parent; it could even be someone unknown or estranged from her. Protecting Children, supra note 19, at 1225.
66 Id.
67 Id. at 1225-26.
68 Id.
69 Id. at 1226.
70 Id. at 1227.
71 Constitution of Parenthood, supra note 30, at 40-42. California, Vermont, and Washington incorporated the UPA (2017) into their state statutes in 2018; bills implementing the UPA have also been introduced in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Parentage Act, Unif. Law Comm’n, supra note 8.
72 Nurturing Parenthood, supra note 27, at 597.
73 Constitution of Parenthood, supra note 30, at 42; see also Changing Tides, supra note 15, at 172.
74 Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2361.
75 See New Kinship, supra note 4, at 95 (discussing known donors versus unknown donors).
76 Unif. Parentage Act (Unif. Law Comm'n 2017).
77 Id. § 703.
78 Id. § 707. An individual withdraws their consent to parent “by giving notice in a record of the withdrawal of consent to the woman who agreed to give birth to a child conceived by assisted reproduction.” Id.
79 Id. § 704. Although the UPA (2017) is laudably gender-neutral in many respects, it does replicate language about “women” as birth parents.
80 Id. § 704(b)(2).
81 Id. art. 9 cmt.
82 Id. § 902 (“This [article] applies only to gametes collected on or after [the effective date of this [act]].”).
83 Id. § 904.
84 Id. § 904(b)(1).
85 Id. § 905(b). The required “identifying information” includes “(A) the full name of a donor; (B) the date of birth of a donor; and (C) the permanent and, if different, current address of the donor at the time of the donation.” The required “medical history” means “information regarding any: (A) present illness of the donor; and (B) past illness of the donor; and (C) social, genetic, and family history pertaining to the health of the donor.” Id. § 901.
86 Id. § 904 cmt.
87 Id. § 904(c).
88 Id. § 702.
89 Polikoff, supra note 6, at 135.
90 Id. at 131-34.
91 See Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (1989); see also Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000) (affirming a mother's right to control a grandparent's access to her children).
92 Michael H., 491 U.S. at 118. Given that Michael H. paves the way for same-sex (marital) parentage rights, this might be the single funniest line of dicta in Supreme Court jurisprudence.
93 Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2360.
94 Dailey, Anne & Rosenbury, Laura, The (New) Law of the Child, 127 Yale L.J. 1448, 1470-71 (2018)Google Scholar.
95 Id. at 1471.
96 New Kinship, supra note 4, at 92.
97 Id.
98 Id. As a general matter, protections for unwed parents are less consistent and more precarious.
99 Changing Tides, supra note 15, at 160.
100 Id.
101 Id.
102 Id. at 165-68.
103 Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 107-08. As Weaver notes, exploitation via adoption continues in the modern day, and disproportionately affects “foreign-born and children of color.” Changing Tides, supra note 15, at 168-69.
104 Changing Tides, supra note 15, at 160-61; see also Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 87 (“Adoption law, itself a modern creation, has evolved over its relatively short life from a simple way to legally recognize de facto parent-child relationships to a rigid, almost mythic, imitation of the birth family and now toward a more organic and expansive system.”).
105 Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 75.
106 Id. at 125 (“It may be that at the heart of the adoptive relationship is adoptive parent control and autonomy rather than the fiction of rebirth.”).
107 Id. at 88.
108 New Kinship, supra note 4, at 112.
109 Cahn, Naomi, No Secrets: Openness and Donor-Conceived “Half-Siblings,” 39 Cap. U. L. Rev. 313, 315 (2011)Google Scholar [hereinafter Cahn, No Secrets].
110 Id. at 340.
111 Id. at 329; see also New Kinship, supra note 4, at 63 (“The notion that blood families trump any other type of family remains deeply embedded in American culture, and this preference for blood ties explains some of the stigma that has accompanied infertility (and, as masculinities studies remind us, failure to reproduce is associated with male impotence and lack of virility).”).
112 Cahn, No Secrets, supra note 109, at 329.
113 Id. at 332.
114 Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 127. Many adoption agreements are negotiated via contract and enforced on a voluntary basis.
115 Cahn, No Secrets, supra note 109, at 335.
116 Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 134; see also Thor (Marvel Studios 2011) (depicting catastrophic fictional consequences when adoptive parents lie to their child about his origins).
117 Changing Tides, supra note 15, at 170-71, 175.
118 Georgia law makes it a felony to artificially inseminate someone (or yourself) anywhere other than in a doctor's office. Ga. Code Ann. § 43-34-37 (West 2010).
119 See generally Blake, Valarie, It's an ART Not a Science: State-Mandated Insurance Coverage of Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Legal Implications for Gay and Unmarried Persons, 12 Minn. J.L. Sci. & Tech. 651 (2011)Google Scholar; Rao, Radhika, How (Not) to Regulate Assisted Reproductive Technology: Lessons from Octomom, 49 Fam. L.Q. 135 (2015)Google Scholar. But see Boucai, Michael, Is Assisted Procreation an LGBT Right, 2016 Wis. L. Rev. 1065 (2016)Google Scholar (problematizing the genetic essentialism inherent in some activists' pursuit of an LGBT right to procreate).
120 For instance, by either obscuring the origins of donor-conceived children, or by sealing and replacing the original birth certificates of adopted children. Cahn notes that the intended purpose of sealing and replacing birth records was “to reduce the stigma of illegitimacy.” New Kinship, supra note 4, at 112. But Cahn also notes that “keeping donor sperm or adoption secret has facilitated a couple's appearance of fertility and may have helped with the acceptance of the resulting children, who were not ‘strangers’ within their new families.” Id. at 111.
121 Id. at 66 (citing Beeson, Diane et al., Offspring Searching for Their Sperm Donors: How Family Types Shape the Process, 26 Hum. Reprod. 2415, 2417 (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
122 Id.
123 Id. at 115-17; Ellen Trachman, Beware Of The Home DNA Kit! You May Find Yourself Being Sued By A Sperm Bank, Above The Law, https://abovethelaw.com/2019/02/beware-of-the-home-dna-kityou-may-find-yourself-being-sued-by-a-sperm-bank [https://perma.cc/7G2Q-RLXk] (last visited Feb. 7, 2019).
124 New Kinship, supra note 4, at 117.
125 Trachman, supra note 123.
126 Lyonds, Donna, The Constitutionality of Extending the Right to Identity Provisions in the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 to Donor-Conceived Children, 16 Hibernian L.J. 63, 64 n.6 (2017)Google Scholar.
127 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Sept. 2, 1990, 1577 U.N.T.S 3, 3.
128 Id.
129 Lyons, Donna, Domestic Implementation of the Donor-Conceived Child's Right to Identity in Light of the Requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 32 Int’l. J.L. Pol’y Fam. 1 (2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
130 Implementation Handbook on the Rights of the Child, Unicef 105 (2007), https://www.unicef.org/publications/index_43110.html [https://perma.cc/2MTJ-PT6U] (noting that “for medical reasons alone this knowledge is of increasing importance to the child”).
131 Lyons, supra note 129, at 4.
132 New Kinship, supra note 4, at 115-16; Emily Chung, Melanie Glanz, & Vik Adhopia, Donor-conceived people are tracking down their biological fathers, even if they want to hide, CBC News (Aug. 20, 2018), https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/sperm-donor-dna-testing-1.4500517 [https://perma.cc/GD3N-8C2W].
133 Sharp, Brittney N., Comparing the Rights of Adoptees and Donor-Conceived Offspring in States Granting Access to Original Birth Certificates and Adoption Records: An Equal Protection Analysis, 11 Ave Maria L. Rev. 515, 517 (2013)Google Scholar.
134 Id. at 523.
135 New Kinship, supra note 4, at 164.
136 Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 102.
137 For a discussion of LGBT parents' desire for biological children, see Boucai, supra note 119, at 1083-87. Boucai lists parenthood motives such as “an inherent craving for immortality,” “a need to cheat death,” and “parenthood's promise of … respectability, normalcy, and acceptance.” Boucai reports a troubling statistic: “less than sixty percent of Americans think that adoptive parents receive the same amount of satisfaction from raising an adoptive child as from raising a biological child.” Id. at 1087.
138 Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 104.
139 Id.
140 Boucai, supra note 119, at 1068-69; see also Bridges, Khiara M., Windsor, Surrogacy, and Race, 89 Wash. L. Rev. 1125 (2014)Google Scholar. Several scholars have noted that biological ties are less “glorified” in communities of color, particularly African-American communities—and that “fictive kin” and other non-biological family ties may offer alternative models for expanding, postmodern notions of family. Id. at 1152; see also Polikoff, supra note 6, at 144. But see Ghosts in the Postmodern Family, supra note 15, at 106-10 (describing the “brutal disruption … [of] identity” experienced by African Americans and other communities of color who were forcibly “separated from a genetic or historic past” through legal policies that promoted slavery, genocide, and forced assimilation).
141 Boucai, supra note 119, at 1099 (citing Kath Weston, Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, and Kinship 107 (1991)).
142 Id.
143 Id.
144 Id. at 1104 (internal quotation marks omitted).
145 Id. at 1106.
146 See Bridges, supra note 140, at 1152 n.103.
147 Id. at 1152.
148 See generally New Kinship, supra note 4, at 74-76.
149 See Jacqueline Mroz, A Mother Learns the Identity of Her Child's Grandmother. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue, N.Y. Times (Feb. 16, 2019) [hereinafter Mroz, Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue], https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/health/sperm-donation-dna-testing.html [https://perma.cc/YEX6-JPQF]; Trachman, supra note 123.
150 See Privacy is in Our DNA, 23andMe, https://www.23andme.com/privacy [https://perma.cc/XCJ4-A4Z3] (last visited Feb. 8, 2020).
151 See Mroz, Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue, supra note 149. That being said, 23andMe is neither an adequate solution nor any kind of guarantee for children who need information about their genetic relatives; and the commercial collection of genetic material also raises obvious and urgent privacy concerns.
152 Meyer, David D., Family Diversity, in What Is Parenthood: Contemporary Debates About the Family 124, 131 (Linda C. McClain & Daniel Cere eds., 2013)Google Scholar (internal quotations omitted).
153 See generally James G. Dwyer, The Relationship Rights of Children (2006); Meyer, supra note 152.
154 Dwyer, supra note 153, at 96-97.
155 Cahn, No Secrets, supra note 109, at 330. Moreover, “relationships can be improved by openness even if the children are not ‘suffering.’” Id. at 330 n.99 (quoting Waldman, Ellen, What Do We Tell the Children?, 35 Cap. U. L. Rev. 517, 560 (2006)Google Scholar).
156 Dailey & Rosenbury, supra note 94, at 1532.
157 Id. at 1481 n.126 (quoting Feinberg, Joel, The Child's Right to an Open Future, in Whose Child? Children's Rights, Parental Authority, and State Power, 124, 125-26 (William Aiken & Hugh LaFollette eds., 1980)Google Scholar).
158 But see Dwyer, supra note 153, at 20-21 (“If the state decides that no one may invoke the power of the legal system to force legal parents to facilitate a relationship between a child and third parties, which might look like state abstention, it is actually thereby conferring on parents an additional increment of power over children's lives. That conferral of power on parents is a form of state action impinging on the interests of children.”).
159 A.G.R. v. D.R.H., No. FD-09-001838-07, 2009 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 3250 (Super. Ct. Ch. Div. Dec. 23, 2009). The clarity of New Jersey's new Gestational Carrier Agreement Act, passed nine years after AGR, will hopefully prevent similar family tragedies in New Jersey—and might also provide a model for other states. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 9:17-60 (West 2018).
160 See, e.g., New Kinship, supra note 4, at 50 (narrating the story of Paul and Nancy, a gay man and a lesbian who chose to have children together and share a house “with their two children and Nancy's partner”).
161 Changing Tides, supra note 15, at 164 (“Same-sex marriage became legal across the country in 2015, and assisted reproductive technology continues to expand the methods by which children are created. The process and practice of adoption will have to change along with the times to be more child-centered as technology improves and the challenges faced by many adopted children become more well-known to the general public. While ideally these changes could result in a legal expansion of children's rights, they may realistically place upon the state a larger duty under the parens patriae doctrine to provide a basic pathway to the child's biological family and identity. Even with new protections afforded to some adoptees, marriage, race and family identity still remain a large part of the adoption process.”).
162 Polikoff, supra note 6, at 143.
163 See Nature of Parenthood, supra note 2, at 2329 (“Views that tie motherhood to biology not only negatively affect women; they also harm men by viewing fatherhood as derivative of motherhood and secondary as a parental role.”).