Judge hits out at lesbians who had baby with sperm from the internet
A SENIOR judge has issued a stark warning to lesbians about the dangers of fathering children using donated sperm in a case taken by a woman suing her Irish partner.
Mr Justice Peter Jackson made his comments in the London High Court after ruling in the bitter battle over access to their six-month-old baby.
The judge said the case was ‘one more example of the painful legal confusion’ that arises when lesbians have children without considering all the consequences.
He spoke out after hearing the two women had been in a relationship for about 18 months when they decided to have a baby together.
The English woman had used a syringe to inseminate her Irish partner with sperm from a donor they found on the internet. The Irish woman, who is in her mid-30s, gave birth in October and the couple lived together in England and jointly looked after the girl, with the English woman even breastfeeding her when her natural mother fell ill.
But the couple’s relationship was ‘fraught with difficulties’ and they separated.
The judge said that in January, when their daughter was two months old, the Irish woman had taken the child from the arms of her ‘protesting’ partner and moved back to her native country.
He said the ‘extremely distressed’ English woman, who is in her mid-40s, was fighting for contact with the child, but as she was not the biological parent she had limited legal rights. In his ruling, delivered after a private hearing in the Family Division of the English High Court, Mr Justice Jackson concluded that the baby’s ‘removal’ to Ireland was lawful and an English court did not have jurisdiction.
But he also said that at the time the girl was taken to Ire-
‘A valuable cautionary tale’
land, ‘family life’, as defined in the European Convention on Human Rights, had existed between the baby and the English woman.
He also quoted fellow judge Mrs Justice Eleanor King describing a similar case as ‘a valuable cautionary tale of the serious legal and practical dif- ficulties that can arise where men or women, desperate for a child of their own, enter into informal arrangements.’
Experts said that such cases were likely to increase as the nature of families continued to change.
Solicitor Hannah Cornish, an English family law expert, said: ‘ The couple needed to make an application to the court to protect the parental rights of the woman who was not the biological mother as soon as the child was born.
‘But they just didn’t address it, and unfortunately, when everything is going well, people don’t automatically think about the legal implications.
‘I think these sorts of scenarios are going to increase as the nature of the family changes.’