New Proposed Law Clarifies Parentage, Surrogacy Rights, and Rights Arising from Assisted Reproduction
The province’s new Bill 28, the All Families Are Equal Act (Parentage and Related Registrations Statute Law Amendment), 2016 proposes some important government-initiated changes designed to provide “greater clarity to parenting laws in Ontario”. As for November 2, 2016, the Bill has been ordered for Third Reading, which means it’s one step closer to being enacted into a law.
The Bill makes various changes to existing legislation, most notably the Children’s Law Reform Act where it sets out new rules of “parentage” for the purposes of all Ontario laws; it also clarifies the interplay of those new laws with existing ones. In particular, new provisions are aimed specifically at rights relating to children born through assisted reproduction, as follows:
• The mere fact that a person provides reproductive materials (i.e. sperm or an ovum) or an embryo for use in assisted reproduction is not in itself sufficient to make that person a parent (except of course where those items are provided for the person’s own reproductive use).
• A child’s birth parent, meaning the person who gives birth to the child, is considered a parent of the child; the only exception is a surrogate (who under normal circumstances is not considered to be the child’s parent).
• If the child is conceived without assisted reproduction, then the child’s biological father is also considered to be a parent, although this is subject to rebuttable presumptions (expressly set out in the new law) as to how the biological father may be determined. There are special rules for insemination by a sperm donor.
• If a child is conceived through sexual intercourse, then the person who provided sperm is also a parent of the child. Rebuttable presumptions are set out respecting how that person may be determined; the biological parents may agree in advance in writing that the person providing the sperm does not intend to be a parent of the child.
• A birth parent’s spouse at the time a child is conceived – either through assisted reproduction or through insemination by a sperm donor – is presumed to be a parent of the child. This is also subject to a rebuttable presumption, and there are also exceptions.
• A birth parent may enter into a pre-conception parentage agreement, involving one or more persons, in which they agree together to be the parents of a child who has not yet been conceived. To be valid, the agreement must involve no more than four parties.
In an upcoming blog, I will detail the other new changes that the proposed Bill would make in connection with surrogacy, parenting declarations, and other corollary changes to legislation.
What are your thoughts on this new legislation? Are these necessary changes in modern society?
For the full text of the bill, see:
http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&Intranet=&BillID=4176
