This just in:
More good news for non-bio moms, to add to the Jenkins-Miller decision I posted about earlier: A California Court of Appeal has denied the latest appeal (PDF) of Kristina S., a biological, “ex-lesbian” mom who has been trying since 2004 to prevent her former partner Charisma R. from being declared a legal parent to the child they planned, conceived, and began to raise together. Kristina was represented by the ultra-conservative Liberty Counsel.
Charisma left a comment on my Enough Already post a few months ago. She wrote:
[Kristina] moved away to Texas when our daughter was 3 and until this past year I hadn’t seen our daughter since she was 5 months old. Like Isabella, our daughter turned a year older this April – she is now 6. I am now a legal parent (have been since she was 3) and have court-ordered visitation in Houston, where they moved. My ex is currently challenging everything that has been thusfar determined by the courts and custody evaluations, etc with an appeal (the 3rd in this case already), which I attended yesterday.
Today’s ruling is the outcome of that appeal. It’s good to see the court upheld Charisma’s parenthood. Best wishes to her and her daughter.
After the jump, an excerpt from today’s ruling so you can see what she has been through. My own child, like hers, is also six—which makes this particularly poignant to me.
After deciding they wanted children, Charisma and Kristina contacted a sperm bank, jointly filled out the required paperwork to obtain sperm from an anonymous donor, and pursued their goal of Kristina becoming pregnant through in-home artificial insemination. Charisma assisted Kristina in the insemination process. The couple kept a joint journal regarding the process, in which Kristina was referred to as “mommy” and Charisma was referred to as “momma.”
After five months of attempts at in-home insemination, Charisma ordered two additional vials of sperm in early July 2002. On the evening of July 8, Charisma used one vial to inseminate Kristina at home; the next morning Kristina took the second vial to a doctor who inseminated her through intrauterine insemination. One of these two inseminations resulted in Kristina becoming pregnant.
Amalia was born in April 2003. Charisma was present for the birth and cut the umbilical cord. On the birth certificate, signed by Kristina, Amalia was given a hyphenated last name that was a combination of Charisma‟s and Kristina‟s last names. The couple brought Amalia into their home and shared parenting responsibilities for the first six weeks of her life. At that point, Kristina returned to work and Charisma cared for Amalia full-time during the day; she also provided care at night.
In July 2003, approximately seven weeks after Kristina returned to work, she moved out of the home she shared with Charisma, taking Amalia with her. Since then, and before the trial court ordered reunification in 2008, Kristina allowed Charisma to see Amalia on only two occasions in the summer of 2003. In the summer of 2005, Kristina moved to Texas with Amalia.
In May 2004, Charisma filed a petition to establish a parental relationship with Amalia. The trial court denied the petition, concluding that Charisma lacked standing to bring the action under the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA) (§ 7600 et seq.). (Charisma R. v. Kristina S. (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 301, 303 (Charisma I).) Charisma appealed, and this court reversed in June 2006, concluding that Charisma had standing to establish parentage under the UPA despite the fact that she lacked a biological relationship to Amalia. . . .
On remand, the trial court found that Charisma is a presumed parent and that the presumption had not been rebutted.
Nancy Polikoff, as one might expect, has written a perceptive analysis of the legal angles of this case.
I know this post was written a month ago, but I found it very interesting.
I don’t understand the biological mothers’ motivation or actions in these cases. I start from the position that the more people a child has in his life who love him, care for and about it, and take an interest in him, the better.
And if you start as a couple, and cause a child to be born into that couple, it makes no sense to start harping on about biological motherhood later, when it was irrelevant at the time the child was wanted, conceived, and born.
Neither do I get the “carried for 9 months, pain of labour” rubbish you see all over the place.
I don’t see this as a gay rights issue, or a religious issue. I see it as an issue about children and making sure they are loved, protected, and brought up living with AND seeing regularly the people who love them.
I’m a mother. My son is 4, and lives with me and his father (who are a couple). I was pregnant and gave birth to him, but Isaac is lucky enough to have a whole load of people who love him. My parents in law are both dead, and therefore the people he refers to as “Grandma” and “Grandpa” aren’t actually related by blood, they are close family friends of my in-laws. He also copies all my brothers and sisters in calling my parents Mum and Dad, so he has Mummy (me) Abba (his father), Mum and Dad (his grandparents) and Grandma and Grandpa (his other grandparents, albeit not by blood). And the only thing that matters is that all these people love him.
If we ever split up (and I hope we don’t) then Isaac will continue to have a relationship with his Grandma and Grandpa. It would be utterly wrong and hypocritical of me to decide that they are no longer his grandparents, just because my relationship with my child’s father ends.
“I don’t see this as a gay rights issue, or a religious issue. I see it as an issue about children and making sure they are loved, protected, and brought up living with AND seeing regularly the people who love them.”
I couldn’t have said it better. Thanks for the wise comments.
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