“Obama Administration Allows Fertility Clinics to Sell US Citizenship” cries one website.[1] At issue is, allegedly, not only infertility clinics making big bucks selling U.S. citizenship for babies gestated by American citizens, but access to the entire U.S. benefits system—including education, health, welfare, and retirement services—for them and their foreign parents who have never even lived here. Horrifying.
Shall we dig a little deeper? Here’s the policy: U.S. women whose children are born in a jurisdiction that recognizes them as a legal parent may now transmit citizenship to them, even if their relationship is solely gestational (“biological,”), not genetic.[2] In some jurisdictions, this happens automatically; in others, she must take steps to achieve this outcome.
On the face of it, this policy change seems like a good idea. First, it recognizes gestation as a key element in pregnancy and parenthood, eroding—even if only somewhat—the insistence that only genetic relationships matter. Secondly, it changes policy to recognize technological developments that have already happened: women are bearing babies with whom they have no genetic relationship. In most cases they are doing this to form their own families. In others, they are doing it to help others, often for pay. In either case, their children’s legal status needs to be ensured. Of course, in most cases, no one questions a child’s status since medical records are, in theory, private. However, recent politics shows why legal clarity might be crucial. And, regardless of one’s take on surrogacy, until and unless it is more stringently regulated (or banned) where it is now legal, like the U.S., the status of the children it produces needs clarification as well to prevent babies from being stateless and help ensure that parents and babies can live together.
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