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Judge: Time to let gay couples adopt |
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 Judge examines gay adoption in New Zealand, looking to liberalize the law.
The acting head judge of the Family Court has called for gay and lesbian couples to be given rights to adopt children, just as a private member's bill on the issue goes into the ballot for Parliament's order paper today.
Paul von Dadelszen says New Zealand is lagging behind many other countries and should allow both homosexual couples and de facto heterosexual couples to adopt children.
A bill proposing this, sponsored in the last Parliament by Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei and now taken up by gay Green MP Kevin Hague, is in a queue of 30 private member's bills that will go into a ballot today to choose the next members' bills on the parliamentary order paper.
Former Labour Government Justice Minister Annette King said the issue was "on our work agenda" before the election but she ran out of time before losing office.
But the National Government's Justice Minister Simon Power said the issue was not on his work programme.
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New research focuses on rainbow families |
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Wednesday, 14 October 2009 05:06 |
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 T he authors of We're a family: A study of how lesbians and gay men are creating and maintaining family in New Zealand spoke to couples who had children by assisted reproduction, and some who were bringing children into a 'rainbow family' from a previous heterosexual relationship.
"For donor families," co-researcher Nicola Surtees says, "the challenges focused on how best to achieve assisted reproduction. For instance, access to sperm was not automatic. The numbers of donors available via fertility services prepared to assist lesbian couples to conceive, as well as the numbers of men approached through social networks that were willing to help, were limited.
"Approval processes and waiting lists at fertility services, coupled with lengthy searches for, and negotiation with, potential donors, were also contributing factors to delaying inseminations."
Co-researcher Alexandra Gunn found that for blended families most of the challenges related to the taking up of parenting roles by non-biological parents: "In many ways the challenges experienced by the couples interviewed would be similar to any families using assisted reproductive technology, or for any adults and their children creating a new family after separation from a previous relationship.
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