The Intentional Procreator vs. Casual Inseminator

Things I've learned.

OR

I haven't learned anything, But these are
things that I've Come to Ponder.



The Surrogacy Laws in California are all based on Case law as opposed to 
laws written by the legislature.


That means that people have sued somebody in court and the judges ruling on 
that case would be used to decide future cases "like that one."


The most significant case in California regarding Surrogacy is the Buzzanca case, 
which happened in 1998. 


In that case, a married couple used donor egg and donor sperm, and a surrogate. 


A month before the birth of the child, the couple divorced, and when the child was turned over to the intended mother, she asked for child support. 


The intended father refused to pay, claiming that he was not the parent. 


Because we didn't have any law at the time, the trial court found that he was not the father, and the intended mother wasn't the mother, because they weren't genetically the parents. 


When the case was appealed, the appellate court acted very swiftly in correcting the trial court, and came up with the rule of the case, and that is that both intended parents were the legal parents of the child. 


The rule in the case was that if parents through a surrogacy contract intend to create a child, and they set in motion a medical procedure which results in the creation of the child, they are the parents, whether they're genetically related or not. 


The interesting quote in the case was, paraphrasing, 


"The intentional procreator is as responsible as the casual inseminator."


And that is how California Surrogacy laws protecting the "Intended Parents" was born.

Comments

Cyn said…
Huh! Love the intro!
Basically, the law sums up to say that a parent that "Intentional" means to become a parent through IVF and Surrogacy is just as much a legal parent as someone that happens ti be a "Casual Inseminator" such as a one night stand.

This meant that parentage could be determined just by the intent of the parties.
Cyn said…
Sorry, my huh wasn't clear. I understand what you were saying. It's interesting that our laws in regards to surrogacy are based on that case, I really had no idea.
There is another big case where the Surrogate wanted to keep the baby because the parent's were not treating HER right during the pregnancy.

The court ruled that the Surrogate was the Birth Mother, the Intended Parent was the Genetic Mother. This gave them equal rights to claims as the mother.

The Tie-breaker was the INTENT of the contact and who they agreed was going to be the mother before transfer.

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