On January 7, 2011, the Connecticut Supreme Court recognized two gay men as the legal parents of their twins born to a gestational surrogate.
The Attorney General of Connecticut, on behalf of the Connecticut Department of Health, argued that parentage could only be established through conception, adoption, or artifical insemination. The attorney general's position was that the same-sex co-parent, who did not have a genetic relationship to the twins, had to adopt the children.
The Connecticut Supreme Court rejected limiting parentage to the above three categories reasoning that under this definition a child born to an infertile couple with egg and sperm donors and a gestational carrier would be legally parentless.
As a result of this ruling, a child born in Connecticut, through a gestational carrier, may not have to be adopted by an intended co-parent provided the legal process is correctly followed.
Connecticut is unique in the Northeast for its statutory treatment of gestational carrier agreements. In neighboring states, such as New York, gestational carrier agreements are unenforceable. However, In Connecticut, there is a statute that specifies how the birth certificate should be prepared in gestational carrier arrangements. See G.S. 7-48a.
In some cases, a family may still wish to pursue a second-parent adoption in Connecticut even though they are provided legal recongition on the Connecticut birth certificate. It has been argued that a birth certificate may not, in and of itself, trigger the full faith and credit clause of the United States Constitution because it is not a court order. However, an adoption order would trigger such a clause. Therefore, it may be suggested that the Connecticut family still pursue a second-parent adoption in order to obtain a Court order should a neighboring state hold that they are not bound by the Connecticut birth certificate.
Case mentioned: Raftopol v. Ramey, SC 18482.
