Families of surrogate children who have been effectively denied French citizenship have gone to the country's highest court to challenge the law denying birth certificates for babies born abroad.
The case could change how surrogate births are handled in France, where infertility treatments are highly regulated.
Until now, children born abroad to surrogate mothers have been denied French birth certificates and a means to prove citizenship. Last year Europe's top human rights court ordered France to change the law, but France has yet to fully comply.
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Infertile and same-sex couples who want a family have limited options in France. For-profit sperm banks are forbidden as is surrogate parenthood. All sperm and egg donations must be anonymous and from someone who is already a parent.
The high court ruled in 2013, the same year France legalised gay marriage, that surrogate babies were born fraudulently, and could not receive birth certificates. Children born abroad to a French parent are otherwise automatically granted a French birth certificate.
"For France, these are neither my children nor my husband's," Sarah Levine, a mother of two children born to surrogate mothers in the United States. Levine, a Denver native married to a Frenchman, has written a book about the experience. "According to French law we are nothing.
