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
CGS is excited to announce the launch of a new anti-eugenics initiative that has been years in the making. Legacies of Eugenics in Science, Medicine, and Technology kicks off with a monthly essay series published at the Los Angeles Review of Books that will expose and contest the reemergence of eugenic ideas in contemporary health sciences, human biotechnology, public health, and medicine. Community and campus-based events featuring the authors are also being planned. The project is a collaboration among CGS...
By Jason Kehe, Wired | 04.11.2024
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or be born...
By Neel Shah, The Preprint | 04.11.2024
Years ago, I interviewed for a residency position at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Standing before the domed Victorian building at the campus entrance, I couldn’t help but be in awe of the history of the place, the great...
By Eleanor Hayward and Joanna Crawford, The Times | 03.29.2024
Gazing out at the Mediterranean from an idyllic rocky mountaintop, Sophie Hermann announced to her half a million Instagram followers that she had decided to freeze her eggs. Since that post in August, the 37-year-old former Made in Chelsea star...