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Becoming a legal parent and the consequences of legal parenthood
- Do you agree that welfare considerations (whether it be the welfare of the child or the welfare of the child’s mother) are irrelevant to questions of birth registration?
- Is legal parenthood essentially a matter of genetics? Do you agree with Bainham that those ‘legal effects, which are peculiar to parenthood, are fundamental to the genetic link’?
- Should the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998 in 2000 have dictated a different approach to determining paternity disputes? Could the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re F (A Minor) (Blood Tests: Parental Rights) [1993] Fam 314 be reconciled with the contemporary demands of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights?
- Should the legal regulation of assisted reproduction begin from the clear premise that everyone has a right to be a parent? Should access to fertility treatment depend on whether or not the treatment is to be privately funded by the patient?
- Are the provisions on determining parenthood under the HFEA 2008 as revolutionary as they may at first appear? Should the law recognise the ‘need of a child for a father’?
- Is the HFEA 2008 right to confer legal motherhood on the gestational mother? Should this approach be applied in the context of surrogacy?
- Have the courts interpreted the requirements for a parental order in a surrogacy case in a way which deprives them of any real significance? Consider the various proposals for reform – what safeguards, if any, do you think should be in place to regulate surrogacy arrangements?