Family Spotlight:
Jennifer and Jennifer
My name is Jennifer Mercer and my wife's name is Jennifer Smoot-Mercer and we have a daughter Rhiannon. We met in February 1999 through a mutual friend in Baltimore. We traveled to Vermont on September 9, 2000 to have a wedding. We would have like to have had a ceremony here in Maryland that our friends and family could attend however we would have not had any legal documentation of the beautiful day. Although Maryland does not currently legally recognize our union as a marriage having documentation of a commitment helped the adoption proceedings. It showed the courts that we had a commitment to one another and we are doing everything in our power to be legally recognized as a family.
I became pregnant in 2002 with our first child Rhiannon Ryleigh Smoot-Mercer. During the pregnancy we contacted an attorney to prepare the documents for adoption. We chose an anonymous donor to avoid any legal road blocks and because we wanted to be the only parents for the child. I wanted Jenn’s name as parent on the birth certificate. We had to pay legal fees and have social services come into our home and prove that Jenn was suitable for adopting our child. I was not permitted to put her name on the birth certificate at the time of Rhiannon’s birth. This confused me because if I were heterosexual and became pregnant through artificial insemination, I could put my partner/husband on the birth certificate even though he was not biologically the father. (Many heterosexual couples use donor insemination to become pregnant and the male is automatically viewed as a parent. I do not see this as being any different than our situation.)
In our case we had to wait for the adoption hearing to be scheduled which took seven months. This process frightened me because if something would have happen to me during that time Jenn had no legal rights to our child. The state would have decided Rhiannon’s fate and could have taken her from her mother.
I am pleased to say the adoption was granted and the new birth certificate says Parent Jennifer N. Mercer and Parent Jennifer L. Smoot-Mercer. We are planning another child this year; this time Jenn will bear the child and I will adopt. There are no guarantees that the next adoption will be granted and the fear that someone could deny me the rights to my child will live with me until the adoption certificate is in hand.
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