Brazilian Gay Couple Become Fathers, Thanks To IVF

For the first time in Brazil a gay couple has succeeded in having a child through in vitro fertilization.

Baby girl, Maria Teresa, was born January 29 in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, and her birth certificate lists both men as her parents.

Mailton Alves, 35, and Wilson Albuquerque, 40, told television channel O Globo that they decided they wanted to have a child after being together for 15 years. They were married in 2011 in ceremony recognized under Brazilian law.

The couple's right to have a child was upheld by a decision of Brazil's Federal Council of Medicine, which authorized the artificial fertilization with sperm donations from either partner.

Until then, authorizations for artificial fertilization were granted only to women who were married or in stable relationships.

Doctors used an anonymous egg donor and sperm from Alves. The fertilized egg was implanted into the womb of his cousin.

"It's an important precedent for people like us who have spent 15 years together and who managed to realize their dreams to have a child, a family," Alves said.

Clicerio Bezerra, a family court judge in the Pernambuco capital of Recife, has legally recognized the paternity of the couple's child.

"There are cases of registration of double paternity by adoption," the judge told a local newspaper. "This case is the only one in which two men have registered a baby as a legitimate child, as far as I know."

If it "is permitted that (same sex couples) constitute a family through marriage, why not allow that family to be completed with a child," the judge said. The couple said they plan to have another baby next year.

Source: AFP