Gender Identity, Parental Status, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

3 May 2024

4pm-5pm

Online - Zoom

Contact: Dafni Lima

In 2019 Iceland passed the Act on Gender Autonomy. The aim of the Act is to provide the rights of persons to define their gender and obtain the recognition of their gender identity. A person can register their gender as man, woman or neutral (non-binary) and shall enjoy the legal rights of the registered gender. In 2021 Iceland made important changes to the Act on Children, redefining the terms mother, father and parent, taking into account both children conceived without and with the use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. The outcome is an attempt to navigate tensions between status, biological facts and agreements as the preferred legal basis for determining parenthoods. The aim of the talk is to give an overview of these changes and the underlying rationale.

Biography

Hrefna Friðriksdóttir is a Professor of Family and Inheritance Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Iceland. She is Vice Dean of the Law Faculty and Chairperson of the Ármann Snævarr Research Institute on Family Affairs. Further a Co-director of the Nordic Centre for Comparative and International Family Law (NorFam), Co-chair of the Nordic Hub of the European Law Institute (ELI) and Corresponding Member of the Cambridge Family Law Centre. Hrefna has written extensively on various topics within family law, child law and social law.