Israeli Supreme Court rules country must allow two mothers on child’s birth certificate
WDG, the Washington Blade’s media partner in Israel, published this article on their website on Thursday. Supreme Court judges on Thursday unanimously ruled that the Population Authority must register female couples as mothers on the birth certificates of their children they have together.
The decision was made following a petition submitted by nine female couples, mothers of children born through anonymous sperm donation.
The panel of judges, headed by Supreme Court President Uzi Fogelman and Judges Ruth Ronen and Alex Stein, rejected the Population Authority’s claim that the birth certificate reflects only biological parentage and ruled that both the birth mother and her partner must be registered as the child’s parent. “The exclusion of the non-biological parent from the birth certificate means a preference for the position of the biological parent over parenting based on other parents,” Fogelman wrote in the ruling, “In terms of substantive law, the parenting of both parents — the biological parent and the non-biological parent — is equal and it includes the same basket of parental rights and duties.
I do not believe that when at the level of substantive law there is equality between the parents, there is room to distinguish between them at the level of registration in the birth certificate.” Fogelman also referred to the interpretation that may be given to the lack of registration on the birth certificate as “an offensive message according to which we are dealing with relationships that are different in nature and essence: while biological parentage is ‘real’ parentage, non-biological parentage is inferior and suspect parentage, a kind of ‘conditional’ parentage.” The ruling does not apply to male couples because the petition dealt with couples who conceived with the help of anonymous sperm donation.
