Surrogate children ‘are not French’
By The Connexion,
The Connexion
| 04. 07. 2011
Top appeal court the Cour de Cassation has decided that a French couple’s twins born in America to a surrogate mother cannot be officially registered as their daughters on the French état civil.
The ruling comes at the end of a long legal battle for Sylvie and Dominique Mennesson, whose daughters were born in 2000 in California, after a surrogate mother had embryos implanted, fertilised in a test-tube from Mr Mennesson’s sperm and eggs from a family friend.
Using a surrogate mother is not allowed under French law, though it is in many countries, including the UK.
The surrogate mother was paid $12,000 for carrying the children, who were registered as the couple’s under Californian law.
The decision contradicts an initially favourable opinion put out by the public prosecutor’s office of the court last year.
Being registered on the état civil would give the children French birth certificates and French nationality.
Mrs Mennesson said on Europe 1 television: “Once more the rights of our children have not been respected. We feel crushed. Our children are foreigners on French soil.”...
Related Articles
By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024
An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.
The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...