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Finally, married same sex parents can have both their names reflected in their children’s birth certificates. This after years of lobbying by gay parents since the system at the home affairs department remained unable to register same sex couples as both parents, even way after the Civil Unions Act came into effect in December 2006.
Lisa Sonnekus of Baby Ventures Rainbow Family, an information portal for same sex parents who have or want to have children, said the ball started rolling when they received letters from concerned parents who could not continue with everyday life decisions for their children due to problematic birth certificates.
“After investigating the problem at home affairs we embarked on a journey to find legal representation and Pro-bono.org assisted us to find the legal firm, Wayne van Niekerk Inc, which decided to go with a class action and get as many couples together. Couples needed to complete various forms, questionnaires etc. to build a solid case”, Sonnekus revealed.
The purpose of the application was to ensure that, where a child is born to same-sex spouses by artificial insemination his or her birth can be registered in the name of both his or her parents.
The applicants sought to have the legal framework and system used to register the childrens’ births, declared unconstitutional and invalid to the extent that it failed to accommodate parents of the same sex.
The Department of Home Affairs said it had to allow this change in order to accommodate same sex partners after the introduction of the Civil Union Act No 17 of 2006 with security features to include parent particulars on abridged birth certificates.
George Shikwambana, Assistant Director – Population Register at the home affairs department said the system is now able to take two names of same sex parents, “provided it is stipulated on the registration forms to indicate who forms part of partner A (father) and partner B (Mother).
The law clearly states that married couples have full parental rights of a child born to them through artificial insemination.
Article by: Lesego Tlhwale
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Breaking News, South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
