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<title> Adoption and artificial insemination - a matter of course for homosexuals </title>
For many people one of the most important things in life is to create a family. That often includes giving birth to a child or at least raising one. According to present laws that is impossible for homosexual couples because the only ones who jointly can adopt a child are a married heterosexual couple. Furthermore is it impossible for a man or a woman to adopt her or his homosexual partner's natural child. The Swedish Government also refuses people who live in a homosexual relationship permission to receive a foreign child for adoption. That is discrimination. 
The Partnership Act is the first law that expressly prohibits homosexual couples to adopt. The one who lives an open life as a homosexual and chooses to legalize her or his relationship by partnership is refused the possibility to adopt. The one who does everything to hide her or his sexual turn and is successful with that may also be approved as a single parent. That is absurd.
To receive artificial insemination the woman must be married to a man or at least living with one. This alternative is therefore also impossible for homosexual women. It is unethical.

Sweden is one of the few countries that expressly prohibit lesbian women access to artificial insemination. This has led to the fact that many lesbian women instead are letting themselves being inseminated at home or abroad. The result of this is that the fertilization often is made with sperm which is not HIV-tested. That is a risk both for the mother and the child. Furthermore the child may live under uncertain juridical conditions. Since registered partners are not allowed to receive artificial insemination, the Partnership Act also contributes and illustrates the negative view society has on homosexuals as parents, which not was its purpose. Ethical and medical reasons indicate that the society must give lesbian women their natural right to the same possibilities and conditions as heterosexual women have. Give them access to artificial insemination.

If the natural parent would pass away there is no possibility for her or his partner, who the child has grown up with and is emotionally bound to, to adopt the child. In Denmark it is allowed. Since 1996 Iceland allows homosexual couples who live in a partnership to jointly have the custody of a child. In the Netherlands the Government will possibly allow jointly custody and also adoption of children living in the country. This makes it highly important to revise Swedish laws on that point. Sooner or later one of these families will move to Sweden. According to present laws the family will not be excepted as a family and must split up. We can not allow that to happen. Splitting up a family because of the parents' sexual turn is inhuman. 

In Sweden there already are about 40 000 children who have at least one homosexual parent. It is either children from earlier heterosexual relationships or children who homosexuals have had by insemination or arranged sexual intercourse. This means that living with a homosexual parent (or parents) is not something new, it already exists. Research shows that these children are as popular and normal as other children. Therefore, children adopted by a homosexual couple will not be harassed or rejected because of their parents' sexual turn. However, the children who already live with homosexual parents do not, with present laws, have the same security as children with heterosexual parents. Moreover, if society keeps disparage homosexuals it is the children who will suffer.

Nowadays many children do not live in a "nuclear family". Living with only one parent is common. Having two parents is better than one, no matter what sex they are of. Homosexuals are as good parents as heterosexuals.

Since there already exist children who have homosexual parents, an adopted child with homosexual parents will be as popular and normal as other children. It also includes children whose lesbian mothers have gone through artificial insemination. By giving homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals, children and parents would be more secure both in juridical and emotionally point of view. It is not what sexual turn a person has that should decide if he or she is suitable as a parent.
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