Surrogacy being forbidden in Germany, gay couples have been venturing abroad to have biological children, including to California. There, it is both legal to hire a surrogate mother and possible for both men to be recognized as fathers. However, upon return to Germany, it is often difficult to have such court decisions recognized, as the lower German courts have been divided over whether this would violate German ordre public. The German Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) has now resolved this issue in favor of the intended fathers, in line with the recent surrogacy cases of Mennesson v. France and Labassée v. France (both of 26 June 2014). It emphasized the right of the child under Article 8 ECHR to a legal relation to those parents desiring to take care of it and rejected as insufficient the motive of preventing circumvention of domestic prohibitions of surrogacy.

The Norwegian Anti-Discrimination and Equality Ombud found, in a decision of September 9 2014, that the current practice of requiring the F 64.0 transsexualism diagnosis and subsequent sterilization are discriminatory. Most people are assigned a legal gender at birth that corresponds with their gender identity, so such requirements puts transgender persons in a worse position than others. The Ministry of Health could provide no justification for this practice. These requirements are thus a form of indirect discrimination of transgender persons.

A woman consented to her female cohabitant undergoing medically assisted procreation (MAP) services with donor sperm performed in private. Before the birth of the child the couple married and the birthmother’s female partner then obtained legal recognition for her reassigned gender as a man. When the child subsequently was born, the birthmother’s (now) husband was registered as the father of the child in accordance with the rule on paternity presumption (he who is married to the birthmother is the father of the child).

The Appeals Court of Stockholm (Svea Court of Appeal) has recognized a judgment by Family Court of the State of Rhode Island, Providence, USA, according to which two Swedish men are the sole legal parents of a daughter born by a surrogate mother in the US.