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California high court resolves legal status of same-sex parents.

Article Excerpt
In a trio of landmark rulings, the California Supreme Court has held that a person who joins in parenting a child may have legal status as a parent regardless of sexual orientation or a biological connection to the child. The court issued separate but simultaneous rulings in three cases involving lesbian couples who had jointly raised children conceived with artificial reproductive technology, but had later separated. The rulings settled a split among state appeals courts over the status of parents in same-sex relationships.

Courtney Joslin, senior staff attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) in San Francisco, applauded the rulings. "The supreme court has now made it crystal clear that same-sex couples who use assisted reproduction to bring a child into the world are both legal parents, with all the rights and responsibilities that flow from that status, and their children are entitled to all the benefits and protections that flow from the legal parent-child relationship," she said.

In the first case, Emily B. and Elisa B. decided to raise a family together, and both women conceived using...

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