Presumption of Paternity, But Not Equality

Abstract

Abstract: Through recollection, Junior, a lawyer who has spent a decade prosecuting intimate partner violence, is faced with the biases inherent to legal presumption when she finds herself having to prove to the Pennsylvania Superior Court that the child she brought into the world with her wife can legally be declared hers. In the context of family law, a child born of a married couple is presumed to be the husband's, regardless of biological relation. However, this presumption only applies to cis-men. It does not apply to cis-women wives who, though not biologically or gestationally related to a child, have taken on the full breadth of financial responsibilities, emotional devotion, and medical actions necessary to bring that child into the world. With queer women's rising reliance on ART, cases like Junior's are happening more and more.