IMPORTANT PARENTING LEGISLATION IN GREAT BRITAIN

When a bill passed by Great Britain’s House of Commons on October 22 becomes law, lesbians will have easier access to assisted reproduction. Current UK law requires fertility clinics to consider a child’s “need for a father” before accepting a patient for treatment. The new law requires clinics to consider a child’s need for “supportive parenting.” Equally important, a lesbian couple who has a child will be able to put both parents’ names on the birth certificate, so the non-biological mom will not have to adopt her own child. That’s what we are trying to do in the District of Columbia, and what couples who marry or enter civil unions/domestic partnerships in Massachusetts, California, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Oregon can already do.

Kudos to the LGB group Stonewall.