Category: Texas

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Trend Watch – Five States Seek To Provide Faith-Based Adoption Protections To Date

According to this article, the count is up to five.  Five states now provide or are moving forward to providing for faith-based religious protections for adoption agencies which place a child’s needs and best interest below the religiously held beliefs of the adoption agency.  Essentially allowing an adoption agency to ignore a child’s best interests over religiously held beliefs.

The five states are:  Alabama (passed on May 3, 2017), South Dakota (passed in March 2017), Virginia (passed in 2012), Texas (pending legislation), and Oklahoma (pending legislation).

Georgia was moving in this direction, but the bill died when the legislature adjourned without acting on it in March 2017. 

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Texas – Faith-Based Adoption Agency’s Religious Beliefs Trump Child’s Best Interest

According to this article, a bill in the Texas House just passed permitting faith-based adoption agencies to reject adoptive parents based on the agencies religiously held beliefs.   It has been argued that the rejections may include gay, divorced, non-Christian, Jewish, etc. 

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Texas Court Rules for Legal Dad in Mom v. Non-Medical Artificial Insemination Dad Fight

A Texas lesbian mom who conceived her child with donor sperm from her friend through “nonmedical artificial insemination” was not successful in her fight to prevent the sperm donor dad from being recognized by Texas as the child’s legal father.  Apparently, the sperm donor dad provided a donation in a cup that was then used by mom for artificial insemination.  The court opinion held that “because father did not provide sperm to a licensed physician for the purpose of artificial insemination, we hold that father is not a donor as that term is defined in section 160.102(6) and therefore may be named as a parent” to the child.

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Texas Birth Certificates

Awhile back before same-sex marriage, certain states refused to issue amended birth certificates after an adoption in the names of both same-sex parents.  In essence the refusal to amend a birth certificate  was a  state’s tacit way of disapproving of the adoption.

Today that is no longer the case for same-sex adoption and birth certificates as far as I know for gay married couples.

However,  the issuance of birth certificates is still a thriving tool in another area of law – children born in the United Staes to parents who are not US Citizens.

In THIS recent NY Times article, a mother who gave birth in the US but was here illegally learned she could not satisfy the Texas requirements for a Texas birth certificate meaning she would be unable to prove her child’s US citizenship.

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