Hong Kong (EFE).- A Hong Kong court issued a landmark ruling Tuesday recognizing both women in a lesbian couple as legal parents of their child, born via reciprocal in vitro fertilization – a significant step forward for LGBT+ rights in the region.
Judge Russell Coleman ruled in favor of the unnamed couple, known as B and R, who conceived the child through IVF in South Africa in 2020, with R contributing the egg and B serving as the birth mother.
The child, born in Hong Kong in 2021, had only B listed on the birth certificate.
Coleman found that Hong Kong’s Parent and Child Ordinance “significantly impedes” the child’s ability to publicly acknowledge R as a parent and held that “the constitutional challenge is made good.”
In the 2023 hearing, Judge Queeny Au-Yeung had already recognized R as a parent under common law, but declined to define R’s legal rights precisely.
This new ruling goes further, although Coleman deferred on specifying the remedy pending further submissions.
The couple’s legal team, Patricia Ho & Associates, lauded the decision, calling it a recognition of both the child’s and family’s rights to equal protection. EFE
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