Both Rhode Island’s Senate and House passed legislation late last week to update the state’s parenting laws for the first time in 40 years, simplifying same-sex couple’s and others’ path to parenting.
Also easing the way for unmarried couples and all who rely on assisted reproduction and surrogacy, “[the act] would eliminate the need for families to undertake a ‘second-parent’ adoption for the non-birth parent, a process that same-sex couples faulted as discriminatory, demeaning and humiliating. It recognizes intended and presumptive parents,” reported The Providence Journal.
“This allows families to become families without having to go to court,” Senator Erin Lynch Prata, the Senate bill’s sponsor, told the Journal.
Governor Gina Raimondo signed the legislation into law on July 21. It goes into effect January 1, 2021.
Reports the Journal:
Modeled after the Vermont parentage law, the legislation also lays out a framework for surrogacy, or gestational carrier, agreements and criteria surrogate parents must meet such as being age 21 and having undergone a mental-health examination — an area that has been absent under Rhode Island law. It codifies that a sperm donor is not considered a parent.
It would also provide guidance, too, for how a child conceived through assisted reproductive technology can seek information about the sperm donor after turning 18. …
For years, lawmakers heard from couple after couple about the anxiety and humiliation involved in the “second-parent” adoption process. State Department of Children, Youth and Families workers had to assess their fitness as a parent to long-planned children. A home study was required and Family Court judges often made families run an advertisement in the city where donated sperm came from to notify the biological father that his parental rights would be terminated.
The couples had to hire lawyers, spending thousands, to help guide them through the adoption process that could only begin only when the child turns six months old, leaving children without adequate legal protection and uncertainty, they said.
“For me the best part is that LGBT families are no longer going to be discriminated against,” said Becker, an organizer of the push for passage.
Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine. We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information. Click HERE to sign up!
