A court in Florida has ruled that the birth mother and the genetic mother of a child are both the parents of that child, legally speaking.

The court described the case as “unique” saying that it had “never before considered a case quite like it”.  But this is happens when you deliberately ‘split’ motherhood.

Reproductive technology is creating whole new types of parenting for courts to consider. But the real question before them should not be who is and who isn’t the parent of a given child, but in what way the reproductive technology industry should be regulated.

The two women at the centre of this case were a couple who decided to have a child. One woman provided her egg and the other was impregnated with that egg which had been fertilized using the sperm of an anonymous donor.

The couple split up and both claimed to be the ‘real’ mother of the child and should therefore have custody of the child.

Because reproductive technology allowed them to split motherhood between the two of them, in a sense the court is right in saying they are both the mothers of the child.

But the case shows the wisdom of the law regarding Assisted Human Reproduction in countries such as Austria which expressly forbid the egg of one woman being placed in the body of another woman based on the principle that the mother must always be certain.

In the Florida case it was not certain which woman was the mother.

Germany also bans surrogate motherhood because splitting mother risks creating identity problems for the child.

The European Court of Human Rights recently found that the Austrian law is not in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Germany supported Austria in the case and said the Austrian law (and its own) was, “intended to protect the child’s welfare by ensuring the unambiguous identity of the mother. Splitting motherhood into a genetic and a biological mother would result in two women having a part in the creation of a child. This would be an absolute novelty in nature and in the history of mankind.”

It continued: “Split motherhood is contrary to the child’s welfare because the resulting ambiguity of the mother’s identity might jeopardise the development of the child’s personality and lead to considerable problems in his or her discovery of identity.”

Was the Florida court even aware of this impeccable line of reasoning?

Finally, what about the child’s father? Doesn’t the child have a right to know who he is? Tens of thousands of donor-conceived children are now in adulthood and are seeking their sperm-donor fathers. Where does this fit into our world of brave new parenting?