Massachusetts Senate votes to expand protections for LGBTQ parents

Massachusetts’s Democratic-controlled Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to update the state’s parentage law, adding protections for LGBTQ families and children born through surrogacy and assisted reproduction that advocates say are long overdue.

The Massachusetts Parentage Act, introduced earlier this year by state Reps. Sarah K. Peake, a Democrat, and Hannah Kane, a Republican, would change how the state defines parentage, expanding protections for nonbiological parents. It would also remove gendered and outdated language from the state’s existing law, like “children born out of wedlock.”

“At the heart of this bipartisan legislation lies a simple yet profound principle: the recognition of legal parentage should not be contingent upon outdated norms or narrow definitions,” Kane said last month in a statement.

The bill, which was also unanimously voted out of the Massachusetts House in June, will need to be approved again by the House before it can be delivered to Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D), who has said she will sign it.

“We’ve been proud to be a national leader and trailblazer when it comes to LGBTQ+ equality, but we’ve got some catching up to do,” Healey, the state’s first gay governor and the fourth out LGBTQ person elected governor in the U.S., said in April.

Massachusetts is New England’s final holdout in adopting comprehensive parentage laws that include explicit protections for LGBTQ families and children born through surrogacy or assisted reproduction, like in vitro fertilization. Under the current law, nonbiological parents must legally adopt their children to secure full parental rights.

Also known as parental recognition laws, parentage laws establish the legal relationship between parents and their child, allowing a parent to make medical and other decisions on the child’s behalf.

The Massachusetts Parentage Act, if passed, will play a key role in ensuring that all children enjoy the security of legal parentage, regardless of how or to whom they were born, advocates said.

“With this vote the Massachusetts Senate demonstrated that fairness under the law is for everyone,” Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, a national LGBTQ civil rights group, said in a statement following Tuesday’s vote.

“We are grateful to the many people, families, and advocates who have fought for years to get to this point,” said Crozier, who helped draft the bill.

“There are many equally valid paths to becoming a parent,” Massachusetts state Sen. Julian Cyr, a Democrat and one of the bill’s Senate sponsors, told the State House News Service this week. “And a biological connection alone is not the only factor in establishing a bond that makes a family.”