A truly bizarre case illustrating that, shared values aside, there are some start differences between American and European law.
AP (“France: Surrogacy Ban Affirmed“):
In a ruling that affirmed France’s ban on surrogacy, the country’s top court refused on Wednesday to allow French citizenship for 10-year-old twin girls born to a surrogate mother in the United States who carried the babies for a French couple. The Court of Cassation said that a California county went too far by ruling that a French couple are legally the twins’ parents. The ruling exposes the legal limbo that many would-be parents find themselves in because of inconsistencies on surrogacy between countries like the United States, which legally recognizes it, and those that ban it. While the court ruled that the girls could not be listed in France’s civil registry, it also said that nothing prevented them from living with the couple in France.
Granting that surrogacy, artificial insemination, and various other issues remain controversial in some circles in the United States, the legal status of children born through those methods is settled. Presumably, the twins have American citizenship–they were born on our soil, so would be unless the parents are diplomats. But, assuming the couple don’t win on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, the child is not a citizen of their own country.
