Harming children to meet the desires of adults

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer recently signed a law that supporters call a “modernization” of parentage law. But it’s far from a technical change. In reality, it makes it easier for adults to get legal rights to other people's children. While sexual revolutionaries redefined marriage more than a decade ago, the task of redefining parenthood is ongoing.

In the good old days, becoming a parent involved having a child. Adoption law covered situations in which unfortunate circumstances required parental rights to be transferred to someone other than the biological mother or father. But the old ways are frustrating to those in relationships that cannot produce children but still desire to have children. So, the new parenting framework represented in this bill creates five new ways to transfer parental rights while discarding all the safeguards of adoption.

First is presumed parentage. The law has long assumed that the husband of a woman who gives birth is the legal father of that child. But what happens when mom is “married” to a woman? Previously, the second woman has not been assumed to be a biological parent because she obviously is not. But this new law assumes she is. As long as the birth mom is in a same-sex “marriage,” the law assigns parental rights to the other woman and simply pretends there is no father.

But what if the same-sex couple is not married? The second way this law bequeaths parental rights is through a notarized “voluntary acknowledgement” that gives parental rights to the adult “acknowledging” his or her parental status. This is essentially paperwork-based parenthood—no court, no home study, no fitness inquiry. Once again, there is a father out there somewhere, but the law doesn’t care because the purpose is to validate the adults in the same-sex relationship who will be frustrated by a process that acknowledges the existence and rights of a biological father.

The third new approach applies when a child is conceived through assisted reproduction (IVF, donor sperm, etc.). A person who consented to the procedure with the intent to be a parent is simply established as a legal parent. Crucially, biological (donor) parents are denied all parental rights and the law bars genetic testing from being used to claim parental rights. This will matter a great deal to donor-conceived children who one day want to know or establish relationships with biological parents—only to be told the law treats their genetic parent as a legal nonentity. Intent at conception now supersedes biology.

The fourth new way to get parental rights might be the most disturbing. Any adult who resided with a child and took on a parental role could be deemed to be a de facto parent if a court decided it is in the best interest of the child. The court has this authority even if the child’s biological mom and dad are fit parents who object to a court giving their child an additional parent. In the world in which the feelings of “oppressed” adults matter most, mom’s ex, the nanny, or even a relative who used to live with you could one day be your child’s extra parent.

The final pathway is surrogacy. The law clarifies that parental rights will be transferred through contract, not family law. It is possible for a surrogate to experience regret and seek parental rights to a child she gave birth to—sometimes upon learning something about the intended parents that suggests they will be bad parents. Under a family law structure, a court would hear her arguments and determine the best interest of the child. Under this new framework, simple contract law governs. The court is not to consider the best interest of the child, only whether the contract is enforceable. Parental rights are purchased and sold, which means the child is commoditized.

This was recently exploited in tragic ways by two gay men in Pennsylvania who crowdfunded their “surrogacy journey” and raised a baby boy, despite one of them being a convicted child sex offender with a felony child pornography conviction. In Australia, two men were imprisoned for what police believe was the deliberate creation of a child through surrogacy, specifically for the purpose of abuse—abuse that was uploaded to a pedophile website and facilitated by offenders around the world.

The fact is, the old system was never broken. Unless a child was biologically yours, the adoption process, though cumbersome, made it possible for parental rights to transfer, all while prioritizing the well-being of the children. The new parentage pathways make it easy for adults at the expense of children. No need to prove fitness, only desire.

The world in which same-sex relationships are in all ways the same as relationships that can produce children will never exist, simply because it cannot exist. Sadly, a lot of children are going to suffer while society pushes ahead with this devastating social experiment.