22 January 2008

MADRID - Spain may have taken a giant leap toward equality when it legalised gay marriage in 2005, but not all of the country's legislation has backed up the newly gained rights of gays and lesbians. Verónica Bolufer and Mónica Catalá, together for seven and a half years and married for the last two, have found that out the hard way. "If we were a heterosexual couple there wouldn't be a problem," the Valencia residents say.

Bolufer and Catalá's troubles began a year ago when, after one of them tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant through artificial insemination, they decided to go for an alternative method to have a child. Their idea was to implant the eggs from one of them into the uterus of the other (they have not disclosed which), a procedure similar to a husband providing his sperm to artificially inseminate his wife.

However, Spain's Assisted Reproduction Law stipulates that donors must be anonymous - a rule that makes what Bolufer and Catalá are proposing illegal. "It's perfectly feasible, it's just like what a heterosexual couple would do," Bolufer, 29, says. "It would make us both natural mothers of the child."

The irony of the matter is that the Assisted Reproduction Law was passed by Congress in 2006, a year after the legalisation of homosexual marriage, suggesting an oversight by lawmakers. "We married to have the same rights as any other married couple," Bolufer notes.

Faced with the refusal of their clinic to carry out the procedure, the couple appealed to the assisted-reproduction commission in the Valencia region. The commission recognised their right to have a child in the manner they proposed, but noted that they must comply with the law.

"All the commission members acknowledged our rights because we are a married couple just like a heterosexual one, but the Assisted Reproduction Law refers to a husband and wife, not partners, and the commission didn't want to take a chance," Bolufer says.

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