A controversial state bill stripping the words “mother” and “father” from birth certificates for more inclusive language hit a snag today when the Massachusetts House rejected the Senate’s amendments to the proposed law.
The state’s Act to Ensure Legal Parentage Equality will broadly define who can legally count as a parent. Those who want to claim parenthood through surrogacy or assisted reproduction are the target audience.
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Instead, the word “father” will be replaced with “parent,” and the word “mother” will be replaced with “person who gave birth” for many official purposes. Section 8 also mandates that the words “a man and a woman” be replaced with “persons”
The bill passed the House unanimously last month before being bumped to the Senate, where it was sent back with amendments, which the House turned down Wednesday.
The House has now created a committee to reprint an identical bill between the two chambers before it can be signed into law and take effect on January 1.
In the name of “parentage equality,” the bill will also replace terms such as “paternity” and “child born out of wedlock” with “parentage” and “nonmarital child” respectively.
This also means that, according to Section 9 of the bill, male and female pronouns may also be outlawed and replaced with “their.”
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“It is not limited to changing the definitions of words long thought obvious, but part of a larger effort to make the categories of male and female under law — categories that ensure the rights, safety, privacy, and opportunities of women — obsolete,” she said.
She added: “This effort has already harmed women across the country, in the context of sports, locker rooms, sorority houses, and even prisons admitting men to women’s spaces. Now motherhood is next on the list to be erased.”
A state representative and chairwoman of the Caucus of Women Legislators, Hannah Kane, said in a statement that the caucus had “endorsed this bill, filed by two Caucus members, because we know that there are many paths to parenthood, and our laws need to be updated to reflect the diversity of families.”
“This bill makes significant strides toward supporting children born through assisted reproductive technology and ensures equality for LGBTQ families to establish parentage,” she added.
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Other states in the northeast, such as Maine, have passed similar legislation updating legal familial terms in recent years.
“Marriage looks different today than it did 10 years ago,” House Speaker, Ron Mariano, had said. “So we’re trying to keep pace with the changes that are occurring in society and not burden people for doing the right thing.”
A state senator, Julian Cyr, one of the bill’s sponsors, said that the legislation is a “critical step towards parentage equality in Massachusetts.”
* Original Article:
https://www.nysun.com/article/massachusetts-bill-that-would-remove-words-mother-father-from-birth-certificates-sees-setback