When Sara Watson's partner got pregnant with their son through in vitro fertilization, they were overjoyed. Then the fear came.
They weren't married, so Watson had no legal rights as Eli's parent even though her eggs were used to conceive him with donor sperm. If the worst happened, Watson wondered, would she even be able to bring their baby home from the hospital?
"There was this possibility that if something were to happen to Anna, my son could end up in foster care and I hadn't done anything wrong," Watson said from their home in Narragansett, Rhode Island.
Three years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that gave same-sex couples the right to marry nationwide , a patchwork of outdated state laws governing who can be a legal parent presents obstacles for many LGBTQ couples who start a family, lawyers say.
But things are beginning to change. A simple hospital form that has long been off limits to same-sex couples because it only had room for the "mother" and "father" are now gender-neutral in some states. That means same-sex partners in Massachusetts, Vermont and Nevada — and soon in California and Washington state — can quickly and easily secure their parental rights with the form rather than having to spend thousands of dollars in court to get an adoption.
