Judge Grants Co-Parent Rights
To IVF Mom's Partner
by 365Gay.com from the Web, November 28, 2004
Indianapolis, Indiana -- In a landmark decision the Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that lesbian partners who agree to conceive a child through artificial insemination are both the legal parents of any children born to them.
In a unanimous ruling, the court said that "no (legitimate) reason exists to provide the children born to lesbian parents through the use of reproductive technology with less security and protection than that given to children born to heterosexual parents through artificial insemination."
The court also chided state lawmakers for being slow to deal with advances in reproductive technology.
"We encourage the Indiana legislature to help us address this current social reality by enacting laws to protect children who ... find themselves born into unconventional familial settings," Judge Ezra H. Friedlander wrote in the ruling for the court.
"Until the legislature enters this arena, however, we are left to fashion the common law to define, declare, and protect the rights of these children."
The court's decision overturns a ruling by a Monroe Circuit Court judge who found that a Bloomington woman had no legal standing with the girl born to her former partner because she was not a biological parent.
The case involved Dawn King who sought co-parenting status to the daughter born to her former partner, Stephanie Benham.
The Monroe court ruled that because King was not a biological parent she had no parental rights.
The child is now 5 years old. Even though Benham and King are no longer in a relationship King wanted visitation rights.
The Court of Appeals ruling only covers those children born to lesbian couples through in vitro fertilization, and does not apply to children who are adopted.
Nor does the ruling address the challenge to Indiana's ban on same-sex marriage, which is pending before the Court of Appeals.
Nevertheless, in an interview with the Indianapolis Star, Fran Quigley, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, called the ruling "an important first step" in providing legal protection to parents and children of nontraditional families.
Micah Clark, a spokesperson for the American Family Association of Indiana which opposes same-sex marriage criticized the ruling.
"The problem is, the cork is out of the bottle. How do you get it back in?"
Clark told the Star. "Once you go beyond a man and a woman, there is no stopping point.
The court is creating a new family that the legislature never intended to exist."
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