Family’s Future Is Uncertain in Singapore’s Gay Surrogacy Adoption Case

In light of the renewed debate over Singapore’s infamous Section 377A of its Penal Code, I remembered an LGBT-related article I read earlier this year. In December 2017, the Singaporean court rejected an adoption application submitted by a gay man who fathered his son via IVF and surrogacy. Similar to what’s happening now, the rights of the LGBT community is Singapore was thrust under an uncomfortable spotlight. 

Last year, a Singaporean man submitted a single-parent adoption application for his biological son. Originally, him and his partner of 20 years wanted to adopt but was told by authorities that the chances of them being able to adopt were slim in Singapore since they were an openly gay couple. In the end, they travelled to the US where the Singaporean’s sperm fertilized an unanonymous donor’s egg and was carried to term by a surrogate, who was paid US$200,000 in return. The child was brought to live in Singapore when he was less than a month old and has been staying in the country on a tourist visa, a long-term visit pass and dependent passes. The couple applied for citizenship for their son but was rejected. Judge Shobha Nair rejected the adoption application, taking issue with the high fee the surrogate was paid. In Singapore, paid surrogacy is illegal and Judge Nair points out the problematic transactional nature of surrogacy is exactly Singapore’s Adoption Act aims to prevent. She further explains that, “This application is in reality an attempt to obtain a desired result — that is, formalising the parent-child relationship in order to obtain certain benefits, by walking through the back door of the system when the front door was firmly shut.” She expressly said that this court was not ruling on what a family unit ought to be like, or what acceptable behavior is. The Ministry of Family Development only encourages heterosexual marriages, and assisted reproductive technologies are only available to married couples. 

This article got me thinking about kinship. Janowski argues that a new kinship structure is emerging - families of choice. In this article, we see this structure intersect with state power, and the result is not pretty. Although the court is supposedly not ruling on what a family unit should be like and the gay couple’s “family of choice” is allowed, the latter’s lives will be significantly challenging. The child is illegitimate and a foreigner (he has US citizenship), so he gets low priority in choice of schools, has to pay higher school fees and there is also the future issue of inheritance. Citizenship grants rights and legitimacy, and as a result, the child does not benefit.

Furthermore, this event indicates structural injustice. Although the parents did “rent a womb”, they had no other option if they wanted to raise a child in Singapore. The transactional nature, the supposed root problem that prevented the approval of the adoption application, is a direct result of the country’s laws. Their homosexual relationship meant they could not adopt nor could they even do an unpaid surrogacy because they don’t have access to ARTs. They could have lied about their relationship and done things to fool the government, but they did not want to hide their relationship. What other choice did they have but to walk through “the back door of the system when the front door is firmly shut”? 

Post URL: http://theindependent.sg/familys-future-is-uncertain-in-singapores-gay-s…