A court in the US state of Massachusetts has ruled that a non-married lesbian whose former partner conceived two children through artificial insemination has equal parental rights as the biological mother. The Supreme Judicial Court had been asked to rule on the case of Karen Partanen who had helped to raise the children, now 4 and 8, born to Julie Gallagher. Partanen sought to be declared a full legal parent after the couple split up in 2013. A lower court dismissed that request previously, but now the Supreme Judicial Court has found that a gay person may establish themselves as a child’s presumptive parent under state law, even without a biological relationship with the child. Gallagher’s lawyer had sought to argue that Partanen was trying to obtain legal rights she would be entitled to only if she had married Gallagher, adopted the children or filed a voluntary acknowledgement of paternity, but these arguments were overruled.
