Colorado Legislature Creating New Way for People to Become Parents While Denying Best Interests of Children

It is no secret how people become parents. It’s as simple and miraculous as the birds and the bees. Basic nature.

But a new law being considered in the Colorado General Assembly will radically redefine how parentage is defined and assigned for children going forward. When we consider that a child’s mother and father are the most foundational and consequential relationships in human experience, the relationships from which all other things in life originally flow, we should pay very close attention when a group of politicians tries to redefine how parentage is established for ideological purposes.

This is precisely what is taking place in Colorado with HB22-1153 which is deceptively entitled the “Family Affirmation Act” because it is trying to hide what it really does. It should be called the “Parentage Redefinition Act.”

It has already passed the Centennial State’s House by a vote of 53-11, moving now to their Senate chamber. As one important children rights group, Them Before Us, explains, “The Family Affirmation Act treats children as products which can be designed, purchased, and delivered to adults who can afford them. This impacts a child’s self-image and familial relationships.” 

This new bill would essentially allow an adult who conceives a child through artificial reproductive technology to simply designate that child’s other legal parent by unquestioned fiat of those self-interested adults, rather than through the careful and deliberative adoption process. That adoption process exists to serve the safety and well-being of the child in question. This bill exists to satisfy adult wishes and desires.

This bill does nothing less than facilitates the legally streamlined creation of intentionally motherless or fatherless parentage of children so that same-sex couples can merely “assign” a child’s other “parent” based on the desires of the adults involved, rather than the fundamental needs of the child. Be sure, this is a very radical step in family law that should be resisted. If two women or two men propose they are the parents of a child, this bill would establish them as legal parents without question from anyone. All that is needed is the declaration of the two adults.

This means the child created by artificial reproductive technology would not have the protective benefit of the state adoption process watching out for them. It would simply mean the “birthing parent” can simply declare any other person they are in relationship with the legal parent without question from the State. The only check they would have to clear is the check they wrote to the bank for the artificial procedure that produced the child. It discounts biology.

HB 22-1153 dictates that such an “adoption” would not require …

  • “An in-person hearing or appearance” of the other adult before adoption professionals.
  • Any sort of home study or examination by CO Department of Human Services or any licensed child placement professional agency.
  • Any sort of criminal offender record search on the “adopting” adult.
  • Verification that no other adult has prior biological/legal connection to the child.
  • Proof that the couple are even married.

The bill essentially determines that if two people say they are the “parents” of an artificially produced child through donor insemination or surrogacy, then they are. Parentage by sheer declaration.

There is no need for the protective adoption process to determine what is in the best interest of the child. This bill says the private and self-interested adults involved get to make that determination without question from the state simply because the adults desire such an arrangement. And there is nothing in this bill that limits that designation to just one additional adult. This is likely not an oversight, as polyamorous “families” are demanding their full rights too.

This bill clearly puts the desires of the adults involved above the first-place need for protection and safety of the child. It intentionally skirts the adoption process and the issue of biology. And why?

The bill passed the House because it is no longer possible to say no to or even question the demands of “LGTBTQ” politics. That is precisely what is at work here.

It is deemed “hateful” and “bigoted” to raise the slightest concern over how the assignment of parentage is now being radically redefined. If same-sex couples are making the demand, adoption laws are said to be unfair. “My wife, and every parent that goes through assisted reproduction, should have the same parental rights that I do. It’s time to modernize our laws so that every parent in our state has equal protections under the law” explained CO Representative and Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, (D-Pueblo). 

Laws like this mean that the rights of adults who desire children trump the child’s fundamental need for either a mother and father or the protection of the adoption process scrutiny simply because of the sexual ideology of the adults.

As child rights activist Katy Faust explains in her extremely important book, Them Before Us, “If you’re hearing the words ‘modern family,’ it is a safe bet that the rights of children have been compromised. All modern families – whether with cohabiting, non-monogamous, same-sex, or polyamorous adults – prioritize adult desire over children’s rights.”

This is precisely what this new Colorado legislation, and others like it that will be introduced across the country, do, and it is why they should be carefully tracked and resisted.

Make a difference in Colorado!

HB22-1153 passed the Colorado House and will be heard in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday, March 23.

Colorado residents, please consider testifying – remotely or in-person – against the bill and/or contacting the members of the Colorado Senate HHS Committee and your state senator to urge a no vote.

The names of Senate HHS Committee members and their individual phone numbers and emails are found here.

 Photo from Shutterstock.