#Familial DNA
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Justice...Finally!
JULY 2023A SUSPECT HAS been indicted in the 1993 kidnapping, rape and murder of Jennifer Odom. The news came 3 decades after the crime and just one month shy of what would have been her 43rd birthday. The man is 61-year-old Jeffrey Norman Crum, SR.. He was already serving 2 life sentences for the rape/attempted murder of another teen, which occurred just 13 MONTHS PRIOR to Jenny’s abduction and…
#Abduction#Assault#Blue Pickup Truck#Cause of Death#Child Abduction#Child Abuse#Child Advocate#Children#CODIS#Cold Cases#Community#Crime & Punishment#Crime Lab#Crimes Against Children#Detective George Lundgren#DNA Match#DNA Sample#DNA Swab#EARL LEE BONEE#Familial DNA#Florida#Florida Courts#Florida Justice#FloridaCourts#Hernando County#Hernando County Sheriff&039;s Office#Homicide#Jeffrey Norman Crum#Jennifer Odom#JR
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Big sis n her huge terrifying monstrous mutant little bro 🥰🥰
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"You have proven yourself to be an allie against magic"
"What would you know Merlin you don't have magic"
"Merlin isn't a sourcerer I would know"
That's it that's the pendragon DNA test they're all blind 😭😭😭
#the pendragons#are idiots#they are blind#the pendragon DNA test#Merlin really fooled the whole family 😭#another reason why Lancelot is better than Arthur#he can actually see#uther pendragon#uther is so arrogant he's blind#bbc uther#morgana and merlin#arthur and morgana#morgana#morgana le fay#morgana pendragon#arthur morgana#king arthur#arthur and merlin#prince arthur#arthur#arthur pendragon#arthur x merlin#bbc arthur#merlin and arthur#merlin x arthur#arthur bbc#bbc merlin#merlin bbc#merlin#the adventures of merlin
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Everyone debating which superboy or if he's still going to be a clone in MAWS. I just want his origin to be so complicated, a clone with everyone's DNA mixed in.
#i don't actually think wilsons dna will be used if hes a clone#i just needed a fourth person lol#superboy#lois lane#clark kent#lex luthor#i want kon to have 5 dad's 12 aunts and 6 moms#i want his family to be so complicated#i yearn for chaos#superman#maws#maws spoilers#my adventures with superman#my adventures with superman spoilers#kon kent#kon el superboy#kon el kent#kal el
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Biologically everybody's kid
So! Have you ever seen those Prompts or Headcanons where Ghosts and Ectoplasm are Unstable and like to change alot? Specifically based on the Hosts Beliefs and such?
Well, imagine this.
Danny is a part of the JLA, and one day he needs to get a Blood Test done. It's just a normal Physical, so that they know how to help him if he ever gets hurt, or to see if he has any health concerns that need to be addressed.
They get the results of the DNA Tear back, and find that it tested positive for Amazonian DNA.
They are confused. Why did Phantom never mention that he was an Amazon? Diana is feeling down because he is a member of her same Race and never told her.
Then, they test again just to see if it was accurate and it comes back as Yeti DNA.
Now they are confused.
They test it again, and it's Dragon DNA.
Again, and it's Kryptonian DNA.
Again, and it's Batman's DNA.
Again, and they find traces of the Speed Force in his DNA.
Every time they test the DNA again, they get a different result, telling them that he is Half Human Half something else that is constantly changing.
They are confused, Danny is not aware of any of this, and Batman is already calling Dibs.
#Dpxdc#Dp x dc#Dcxdp#Dc x dp#Danny Phantom#Dc#Dcu#This is just a funny little blurb I thought of in bed#Basically Danny's Ghost Half likes to change his DNA so that it matches his newly found family#They tested positive for Amazonian from Pandora#Yeti from Frostbite#Dragon from Dorathea#Kryptonian from Superman#Speed Force from The Flash#And Batman from Batman
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"Stillborn? No, no, still born." -- DPXDC AU
Based off a comment I saw where Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy in the earlier comivs, and was ecstatic to be a father. So much so that Talia feared he'd give up being Batman for it, so when she gave birth she put the baby (Damian) on a doorstep and (seemingly) told Bruce that the baby was stillborn.
Instead of Damian, that baby was Danny! Meet Daniel Brown, the 14 year old foster kid whose been living with the Fenton family for the last two years. He's about two years older than Damian.
His last name, "Brown", was a generic surname given to him because the note he came with didn't have one on it. It just had the name "Danyal" on it, but albeit 'Daniel' was the one that had been put into the system for, I'll be totally frank here, racism reasons.
(I looked it up to make sure, and it's generally not permissible for foster parents to change the names of their foster kids even if it's a permanent residency, and for that reason Danny doesn't have the last name "Fenton".)
Danny's got ✨~issues!~✨ He's been through a handful of homes growing up, most of them terrible for a variety of reasons. Which has, as a result, left lasting scars. He's generally a very sweet kid, just very distrustful and jumpy. He's got the signs of a kid suffering from PTSD, and a handful of other issues including attachment and insomnia. His inferiority complex could rival Damian's, and that's going to make for an interesting mutual hatred for when they finally meet.
(something I'll get into later)
He still has the blanket he was found in. It's made of a very high quality material and is a beautiful emerald green with little golden thread accents, it's high quality as a result has Danny clinging onto a desperate hope that his bio family might be out there, and the only reason they gave him up was because of some outside factor. It's been taken a few times in old foster homes, and he's flipped out each time.
While he still calls Jack and Maddie by their names, he likes them well enough. The bar isn't that high though, and while they're some of the better foster parents he's had, "better" doesn't equal "safest". Their laboratory malpractice. Basically, C- Fenton Parents. They're negligent by virtue of being engrossed in their work, but they do care equally about Jazz and Danny. So he doesn't hold it against them that much.
He kinda prefers it that way, their loud affection is overwhelming and Danny doesn't know what to do with their attention, even if he craves it. It's a bit of a complicated situation.
They took in Danny because they genuinely wanted another child, but didn't want a big age gap between them and Jazz. It was actually Jack's idea to foster, and they discussed it with Jazz beforehand. She was all for the idea. Thus, a handful of weeks later, a ton of paperwork, and inspection later, and Daniel Brown entered their household with a trash bag in one hand and eyes like shards of stained glass.
His relationship with Jazz is kinda strained, but that's by virtue of her constant psychoanalyzing and helicoptering. Like with the parents, Danny's overwhelmed by the attention and also just, straight up doesn't like the fact that she's telling him that there's something wrong with him. He knows that, thank you. He pushes her away when she does this.
Other than that though? When Jazz isn't smothering him and is acting like an actual sibling and not a third parent, they're pretty close, and Danny really likes her. They've hung out a few times on their own volition, and Jazz showed him how to take better care of his long hair.
His school situation,, pretty similar to canon with the bullying, albeit with a few more instances of him blowing a fuse and lashing out against his attackers. He's a rather angry kid, but it's quiet. It builds up, piles on top of itself, until eventually, like a volcano, it erupts and burns everyone within radius.
Danny's got a fire core, not an ice core. Phantom's hair is made of white magma; thick and heavy, setting itself on fire when his anger runs hot. When he gets angry, his skin begins to char and split open to reveal pulsating lava underneath, and he crackles and pops like a raging forest fire.
I haven't decided yet on how he meets the batfam -- i've got two ideas but they're both in opposition to each other, and drastically alter how the rest of the plot goes. But I do know that him and Damian hate each other in the beginning. And it has nothing to do with inheritance or "being the blood son" -- although their blood relation absolutely plays the major role in their disdain for each other.
Simply put, they're jealous of each other for the same thing: thinking that the other was wanted.
Damian hates Danny because, unlike Damian, Bruce knew about Danny since conception and wanted him from the moment he heard about him. He had a whole nursery set up, and still does. He never took it down -- just locked the door. Damian was thrust upon Bruce without warning, and he feels like he forced himself into the family. And while on some level Damian knows and understands that Bruce wants him and loves him as much as his other children, that doubt and feeling of inferiority still remains. He looks at Danny and sees him with what Damian always feels he needs reaffirmed.
Meanwhile, Danny hates Damian because he looks at him and sees him with everything Danny's ever wanted. He hates him because Damian grew up knowing both of their parents, with one of them for most of his life, and then moved over to the other. There was never a moment where Damian was (seemingly) left to doubt his place within the family. Damian was raised with the very same woman who left Danny on a doorstep, with no clue to his identity beyond a little green blanket and a note with only a first name. Damian was wanted everywhere, and Danny was wanted nowhere. Damian is Danny's replacement in his eyes.
(It's the little revelation that Damian grew up with their mother that elevates Danny from being quietly envious of Damian to downright despising him. What did Damian do, that Danny didn't? He could live with Damian living with Bruce -- Bruce didn't know Danny was even alive. But him living with their mom? Are you fucking kidding him?)
Damian never outright attacks Danny physically, but it's not like he hides that he didn't like Danny. Meanwhile, Danny, in all his repressive anger, quietly despised him from a distance until finally one wrong snide side-comment has him blowing up and it becomes a screaming match. They're both just enough similar to each other that when they look at each other they really just see a mirror.
They'll work it out together, eventually. But it'll be ugly and cruel and explosive, and they'll start mending the bridge to become brothers in more than just blood relation in the end.
But yeah, stillborn Danny has... a lot going for him.
#dpxdc#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dp x dc#dp x dc crossover#dpxdc crossover#danyal al ghul au#danyal al ghul#dpxdc prompt#additions. opinions and brainstorming are encouraged!! i'd love to hear what other people's thoughts on this are and brainstorm with them.#the brainstorming is the best part.#stillborn? no still born au#poc danny fenton#stillborn au#long haired danny fenton#danny isn't surprised by the fact that the fentons were greenlit for foster parenting considering some of the foster parents HE'S had#those two ideas differed in who found out about who first. Whether it be Bruce or Danny. bruce finding out about danny first results in#Bruce seeking him out first and being able to explain his side of the story first without misunderstandings. this is the Happy Version#Danny finding out about Bruce first results in him getting an official DNA test done and intentionally seeking him out to introduce himself#except when he finds out about damian's existence his shit self worth results in him jumping to the conclusion that his bio family never#wanted him in the first place. that they weren't looking for him and instead just up and replaced him. This is the Fucking SAD Version#and includes a conversation where Danny looks Batman dead in the eyes and tells him that he was 'daddy dearest's fucking reject'#danny completely unaware that batman = bruce wayne btw. for the extra angst. bruce has to stand there and take it. rip#this poor boy needs antidepressants. therapy. and rehab. probably. i've thought about him having an old addiction that he was recovering#from prior to the fentons. but its not confirmed yet. if i go through with it its either gonna be nicotine or like painkillers. i need to#wait and think about it when i'm not on the angst train. i have a tendency to go overboard when i am. its the endorphin high#Danny calls Damian his 'fucking replacement' and Damian tackles him.#starry makes another angsty au
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YIPEE-DEE-DOO.... They should do EXIT but with the chaotix
#jo.art#charmy bee#vector the crocodile#espio the chameleon#it will be forever my hedcannon that charmy is trans#and thats why they always fucking want him back in the hive#cause in theory hes the next queen bee#he never does so they had to make do#which is why i think he'd get kinda big as an adult#and probs start chonking up around 30 and up#royal family dna an all#i know my brain is fucking massive#fleetway#sonic the comic
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here's a quick doodle of Respawn smiling. I am reminded of how few my fanarts are for him, so there.
He's canonically half brother of Damian. And he still has no human name! Been waiting for Deathstroke to give him one, but I guess he has to earn it?
I just HC his name as Rhys al Ghul Wilson (nickname for Respawn) for now.
Robin (2021) #13
#Respawn dc#Damian wayne#Robin#Rhys Wilson#Dami has a whole-ass extended asian family outside of the Waynes#And DC wont do anything about them amazing characters wtf????#Ra's made him as a clone from Talia and Slade's DNA#and with his self-regeneration from Deathstroke#he became the organ-donor of Damian everytime the boy gets injured in training.#So yeah very angtsy#Very edgy#I love him already#He's already family and imma draw him as one#Adopt murderbabies#Give murderbabies a home#Fanart#Respawn#demon daycare!au
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And who says scientists aren't passionate! 😉💖 here's a little comic based off an ACTUAL moment I shared with my irl partner @cherry-bomb-ships last night 😂
Taglist♡: @crushes-georg @changeling-selfship @me-myself-and-my-fos @sunstar-of-the-north @tiny-cloud-of-flowers @adoredbyalatus @dearly-beeloved @squips-ship @sunflawyer @miutonium
#artfarts#self insert#self ship#self shipping community#self insert x canon#fictional other#the powerpuff girls#professor utonium#ppg blossom#ppg buttercup#ppg bubbles#ugh i need a familial tag for those girls cause theyre MY BABIES TOO 😭😭💖💖💖#but hehe take this for now!!#and for context my partner and i were in bed and i came across one of those 'would u pass a fifth grade science class ' things#that was one of the questions and we DID 100% make out after answering in sync#and a little confession....im not all that good at science#BUT when i was in middle school i memorized what dna stood for cause i thought itd make me sound smart 😂😂😂#i was trying to impress imaginary people who MAY ask#and tbh my s/i isnt all that smart either shes just quirky#she has my autism after all!#and yeah AUGH FIRST DRAWING OF THEM KISSING??? AAAAH??
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It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.
People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.
And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.
If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.
#and ive heard even dumber origins of the cherokee family myth#such as an ancestor having a silly sounding name so the descendents just go 'oh she mustve been an indian!!!'#i was one of the few people who had my ancestry done on the facebook and had genuine cherokee ancestry#[though i had found it before it was just really validating to get it double checked and i started finding cousins (:]#like. i was told once when i was a kid by my grandma that my dad had cherokee ancestry and i didnt believe her. its wild that so many peopl#will make it a Fixture of their identity [or even just smth they bring up ever] with Zero proof#at least for cherokees from what ive seen its usually considered really disrespectful to claim to have cherokee ancestry without#actually having the documentation [like ancestors on the rolls]#and no a dna test doesnt count. nor does 'my dad is Clearly not white!' or 'high cheekbones' or old family photos or anything#i had this discussion with someone recently whose dad had been calling himself 3/4 native but didnt know exactly what nation ???? hello?#and its like... sorry but ur dad is like. italian lol.#[and blood quantum is bullshit anyway im tired of the 'im 1/16 cherokee' comments its dumb#cherokee nation does not have a blood quantum requirement. its pointless bringing it up in the discussion of who is or isnt cherokee]#also mandatory disclaimer that im reconnecting. i didnt grow up connected to the culture of even knowing my ancestry#this is all from my looking into this stuff over the past year or so. i cant claim to be an authority over anything regarding this#this is p much all my repeating things ive heard said by people who know a lot more than i do haha#man. and this isnt even starting to get into the fake tribe stuff. the only legit cherokee groups are the 3 federally recognized bands#cherokee nation of oklahoma. united keetoowah band. and the eastern band of cherokee indians.#any others that are state recognized or not at all arent acknowledged as legitimate by any of the legit cherokee groups#anyway. my final message goodb.ye#cherokee#tsalagi
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THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW EVER MADE!!! FUUUCK!!!!!
#just kind of a randomly selected assortment of hugs#I LOVE THAT THEY HUG SO MUCH IN THIS SHOOOW#WAAAAH!! WAAAAAAAAAHHH#the secret saturdays#zak saturday#komodo saturday#fiskerton saturday#doc saturday#drew saturday#zon saturday#doyle blackwell#dna brothers#family......... sobs and cries and wails FAMILY
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Upcoming Kdrama August 2024 🌈
2/8: Bad Memory Eraser with Kim Jae Joong, Jin Se Yeon, Lee jong Won. 16 episodes; rom-com.
10/8: Romance in the House with Ji Jin Hee, Son Na Eun, Choi Minho. 12 episodes; melodrama, romance.
12/8: Your Honor with Son Hyun Joo, Kim Myung Min, Kim Do Hoon. 10 episodes; thriller, law, crime.
14/8: Perfect Family with Park Ju Hyun, Yoon Se Ah, Kim Byung Chul. 12 episodes; thriller, family.
14/8: the Tyrant with Cho Seung Won, Kim Seon Ho. 4 episodes; sci-fi, fantasy.
16/8: Black Out with Byun Yo Han, Go Jun, Kim Bora. 14 episodes; thriller, mystery.
17/8: Love Next Door with Jung So Min, Jung Hae In, Yun Ji On. 16 episodes; rom-com.
17/8: DNA Lover with Choi Siwon, Jung In Sun, Lee Tae Hwan. 16 episodes; melodrama, rom-com.
23/8: Pachinko 2 with Lee Minho, Kim Min Ha, Noh Sang Hyun. 8 episodes; historical, melodrama.
23/8: The Frog with Go Min Si, Yoon Kye Sang. 8 episodes; thriller, mystery.
24/8: Cinderella at 2 AM with Shin Hyun Been, Moon Sang Min, Yoon Park. 10 episodes; rom-com.
26/8: No Gain, No Love with Shin Min Ah, Kim Young Dae, Lee Sang Yi. 12 episodes; rom-com.
Many new shows coming up just in time for my vacation!!!
#bad memory eraser#romance in the house#your honor#perfect family#the tyrant#black out#love next door#dna lover#pachinko#the frog#cinderella at 2am#no gain no love#shin min ah#lee sang yi#go min si#lee minho#jung so min#jung hae in#byun yo han#kim seon ho
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me when i see people shipping the batfam together
#jason todd#dick grayson#tim drake#damian wayne#cass cain#red hood#black bat#nightwing#robin#red robin#use of winchester gif intentional because they are also siblings people ship together#in come the arguments that it's fiction so it doesn't matter#or that they aren't genetically related so it's okay#they are siblings dna or not#you're also devaluing adopted families by saying only people who are genetically related are family#anti batcest#y'all are nasty
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😭😭
#got tired of wishing someone would gif princess patt (aka the woman whose face card never declines)#so I decided to contribute with my own#shitty screencap posts (TM)#because this bit!!!!!#I know we're all here for anin and pin but this relationship is also v v important to me your honour#I love a good 'dna doesn't make a family love does' situation#(I know princess patt actually IS pin's aunt but you know what I mean)#and I love how you can tell how much she genuinely loves pin and that she really took it upon herself to raise her as her own#which shows in the fact that pin has become an amazing young woman (who has my dream job! you go girl!!!)#and idk man I'm emo :((((#also I was really hoping this scene would end in a hug because they don't seem to ever do it#so it just made me so happy all around#I would die in a battlefield for them#(but seriously CAN WE TALK about how beautiful princess patt is I want to claw my face off#ma'am... I am a weak lesbian please have some mercy)#the loyal pin
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A woman wanted to have a relationship with the child she gave birth to. And the men's response "was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family." But the kid was created from her egg. She is the kids biological mother.
5 June, 2024 By Julie Bindel
This article is taken from the June 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
There is a contradiction at the heart of the international surrogacy industry. Its participants pretend that surrogates’ feelings for the children in their wombs do not exist, whilst simultaneously trying to prevent them acting on those feelings. Many commissioning parents broker the babies in jurisdictions that allow restrictions on surrogates’ rights.
In the UK, this contradiction was recently laid bare in a Family Court case (citation number: [2024] EWFC 20). A gay male couple were engaged in a long-running legal battle with their son’s surrogate. Rather than vanish after handing over the child, she wanted a role in the boy’s life. The men’s response was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family. There was “no vacancy” for her to occupy in his life, they claimed, and it was prejudicial to gay families to suggest otherwise.
At the start of this story, G, the surrogate in question, was a 36-year-old single mother of a teenager and naive about what surrogacy entailed. The commissioning parents were friends of her sister but not people she knew. Aged 43 and 36 and married, they were members of an agency, Surrogacy UK, and very familiar with its protocols — which included a “getting to know you” period — and support. However rather than go through the agency, the men chose to fast-track the process with an independent arrangement with G.
Following a failed transfer of a donor egg, the trio decided to use G’s own egg. The men agreed that G would have contact with the child, but none of the parties properly considered the implications. The relationship between the three deteriorated during G’s pregnancy. G gave birth to a boy in September 2020.
After the birth, G would not initially consent to the parental order, under which she would lose parental responsibility as she feared being cut out of the child’s life. But during a lengthy online hearing in which she was alone and unrepresented — unlike the men — G was pressured by the judge to agree to the parental order along with a contact agreement called a child arrangements order.
After obtaining parental responsibility, the men quickly reneged on the agreement. When G turned up at their house for a pre-arranged visit they threatened to call the police. She recorded the meeting. The Family Court judge later declared of the recording “what was said has rightly been described as ‘horrendous’”. The men told G she was “harbouring a desire to have an inappropriate relationship” by wanting the boy to recognise her as his mother and accused her of having “rejected the role of surrogate”.
In January 2022, the men refused to allow G to visit her son and applied for the contact agreement to be changed. G then made her own application for the parental order to be overturned. She won her case in November the same year. This restored her parental responsibility for the child and removed it from the man who was not the child’s biological father.
The men redoubled their efforts to remove G as a parent, this time applying for an adoption order. During court proceedings, they claimed their son’s identity was that of a child of same-sex parents being raised within the LGBT community and that he belonged to a “motherless family”.
As a lesbian who came out in the 1970s, I’m only too aware of the history of demonisation of lesbian and gay couples. Parents who conceived children in heterosexual relationships were often denied custody and contact if they came out as gay after separation. Foster and adoption agencies were openly prejudiced. But times have changed, and same-sex parents are now a common sight at the school gates in some parts of the UK.
Claims that the children of same-sex parents are disadvantaged in some way have largely been defeated with an expanding body of evidence (e.g. Zhang Y, Huang H, Wang M, et al., BMJ Global Health, 2023) showing their outcomes are similar to those of heterosexual families. Gay rights are robustly supported in most public institutions and private organisations. For a gay couple to call on historic prejudice to justify excluding a mother from a child’s life is unforgivable.
In any case, the men’s argument was fatally — and obviously — undermined by its own logic. If the boy did not have a mother, there would be no need for the court case.
As the jointly-instructed clinical psychologist in the case recognised, the driver of the men’s case was the “elephant in the room” — G’s existence as the child’s legal and biological mother — and the men’s fear of her maternal bond with her son. The men had difficulties “accepting the reality” of the child’s conception, the psychologist found, and considering what sense the boy might make of the situation as he grew up.
“They have strongly held to the surrogacy agreement and the narrative of [G] being a ‘surrogate’ because in that narrative there are no, or hardly any feelings from the surrogate for the baby,” the psychologist wrote. He described the men as attempting an “erasure of the mother”, which he said was not in the child’s best interest as it did not reflect reality.
Refusing an adoption order that would likely have resulted in cutting G from her son’s life, the court ruled that G should have direct and unsupervised contact with him. The judge criticised the men for blaming G for everything that went wrong. The judgment also raised questions about how an adoption order would be explained to the boy, given it would have been made without his mother’s consent.
To some extent, history repeated itself in this case. There are multiple examples of legal battles involving lesbian couples who created a child with the help of a sperm donor who later inconveniently insisted on contact or on playing the role of father.
As the Court of Appeal ruled in one such case in 2012: “What the adults look forward to before undertaking the hazards of conception, birth and the first experience of parenting may prove to be illusion or fantasy. [The couple] may have had the desire to create a two-parent lesbian nuclear family completely intact and free from fracture resulting from contact with the third parent. But such desires may be essentially selfish and may later insufficiently weigh the welfare and developing rights of the child that they have created.”
What’s concerning in this case is the language used — the “erasure” of the mother
Contested surrogacy cases are little different from these wrangles and, indeed, from any other contact disputes. What’s concerning about G’s case, and what makes it different from the case of the lesbian parents above, is the language used. The psychologist explicitly referred to the men’s attempted “erasure” of the mother. They simply refused to acknowledge G’s existence in any of the forms in which she fulfilled a maternal capacity: legal, genetic and as the person who gave birth. They were supported in this illusion by the professionals who weighed in on their behalf.
In the space of a few years the term “motherless” has moved from an emotive description of absence to a positive identity argued for in court. This shift is entirely consistent with the narrative that surrogacy participants feed to the public.
When celebrity couples introduce their surrogate children on social media, the women who gave birth to them are rarely mentioned. The new babies are “welcomed” as if they have been sent by special delivery. That is in line with the attitude of the international surrogacy industry, which reduces the role of the birth mother to that of a “carrier” or rented womb.
For commissioning parents, it must be very easy to regard the woman who bore their child for nine months as a mere service provider, someone to be gratefully forgotten as soon as the final instalment is paid and the product handed over.
Meanwhile, parts of the NHS are determined to de-gender childbirth, routinely referring to “birthing parents” rather than mothers. As an example (there are multiple) the Royal United Hospital Bath’s “information for families” on labour induction refers to dads, but there is no mention of mothers — only birthing parents.
Feminists have long campaigned for gender-neutral language to reflect roles that are indeed, or can be, gender-neutral. But the uncoupling of sex from the necessarily female processes of pregnancy and childbirth is a step towards a dystopian future. In 2015 Victoria Smith wrote, “Gender-neutral language around reproduction creates the illusion of dismantling a hierarchy — when what you really end up doing is ignoring it.” I would go further. Gender-neutral language around reproduction — just like any language that obscures reality — reinforces and helps establish hierarchies of oppression.
To the men, G was simply a surrogate womb to a motherless child. But to G and to Z, she was his mother. As the psychologist said, “‘Motherlessness’ does not exist. The child was born from two people, biologically, and from three people, psychologically … The mother certainly played a part, biologically and psychologically, in the conception of the child.”
The case — unremarked and unnoticed by the media — will do nothing to change popular opinion of surrogacy. It is likely to encourage intending parents to explore dubious overseas jurisdictions, where surrogates have fewer rights. The surrogacy profiteers will continue to cheerlead wealthy couples in their exploitation of impoverished and naive women.
As for the word “motherless”: in time it may lose its negative connotations and become solidified as an identity. Will it become a badge that straight children can use to signal their connection to LGBTQ+ community? Or an oppression card that can be deployed by the children of wealthy men to explain bad behaviour towards women? Either way, Disney and Dickens are going to need a lot of rewriting.
#Restrictions on surrogates' rights#UK#Erasing mothers#Two men can't have a baby by themselves#The men decided to fast track the surrogacy process by going outside of an agency#The kid has her DNA#Men trying to create a motherless family by ignoring the birth mother#Men exploiting a woman and then crying homophobia when she fights to see her child#Anti surrogacy#Babies are not commodities#Surrogacy exploits women#Men trying to impose a motherless identity on their children#Purchasing fathers in denial that their kid also has the DNA from their genetic mother
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I understand how, from an angst perspective, the whole “Percy will never really be apart of the Blofis family” is an interesting idea but it’s also such?? Bullshit? Like what do you mean? He calls Paul his dad? That’s his family? Go? Fuck yourself?
#ESPECIALLY in a series about how family is more then just blood/dna#tasteless take#go home#also college lasts four years and if you think for one minute Percy and Annabeth don’t move back to NYC we’re not even having the same convo#percy jackson#pjo#pjo tv show#percy jackson and the olympians#pjo hoo toa#sally jackson#paul blofis#justice for paul#estelle blofis
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