2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) their surrogacy contracts after the cut-off date for the law change. 97 It was further reported that ‘surrogate babies born to gay parents have been unable to leave India because countries such as Germany, Italy and Japan have refused to grant infant citizenship’, presumably due to reluctance to grant citizenship in breach of Indian law. 98 It is important to recognise that the problems in securing citizenship (and avoiding risks of statelessness) for children born to same-sex couples through surrogacy in India did not begin with the 2013 changes in law. Already, children born by Indian surrogacy to other same-sex couples (including from France and Israel) had also encountered (risk of) statelessness due to their own countries’ restrictive positions on the use surrogacy. In the case of France, ‘[t]he laws [were] particularly stringent for homosexuals who want to become parents through surrogacy’, 99 while in Israel a family court denied the gay couple to undertake a DNA test in order to confirm that the biological father was an Israeli citizen. 100 In both cases, the children were left in a stateless limbo while the intentional parents sought to resolve the cases. After the possibility of surrogacy in India was closed for same-sex couples in 2013, Thailand emerged as the new prime destination. However, the 2015 Protection of a Child Born by Medically Assisted Reproductive Technology Act there similarly excluded samesex couples from surrogacy, resulting in ‘dozens of gay Israeli couples whose children were rendered stateless while Thailand and Israel negotiated an agreement’. 101 The challenges described in the above paragraph highlight how, in the context of surrogacy (or other forms of ART) for same-sex couples, ‘[b]irth certificates are evidence of parentage but not conclusive proof thereof’. 102 Several of the examples cited within this article underline what can be described as a ‘heteronormative parental presumption’ — that is assuming without questioning that a heterosexual cisgender ‘intentional’ parental couple are necessarily the biological parents of the child, while simultaneously requiring ‘intentional’ parents of rainbow families to prove the genetic connection to the child. This heteronormative logic is clearly reinforced by conventional conceptions of nuclear family structures that have become naturalised within law and administrative practice in many jurisdictions. While the USA’s limited interpretation of legal parentage based on biology rather than ‘intent’ in 97 ‘Aust Fears over India Surrogacy Changes’, The Sydney Morning Herald (online, 4 March 2013) <https://www.smh.com.au/national/aust-fears-over-india-surrogacy-changes20130304-2fhcp.html>. 98 Kerry Brewster, ‘Surrogacy Laws May Leave Australian Babies Stateless’, ABC News (online, 5 March 2013) <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-05/surrogacy-laws-couldleave-australian-babies-stateless/4552460>. 99 Sumitra Debroy, ‘French Gay Dad May Lose Surrogate Kids’, The Times of India (online, 9 June 2010) <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/French-gay-dad-may-lose-surrogatekids/articleshow/6025936.cms>. 100 Tomer Zarchin, ‘Gay Father of Twins Born to Indian Surrogate Denied Permission to Bring His Sons Home’, Harretz (online, 9 May 2010) <https://www.haaretz.com/1.5117649>. 101 Linda Khan and Wendy Chavkin, ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Biological Bottom Line’ in Yasmine Ergas, Jane Jenson and Sonya Michel (eds), Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World (Colombia University Press 2017) 38. See also Protection of a Child Born by Medically Assisted Reproductive Technology Act (Thailand) BE 2558 (2015). 102 Elizabeth Schwartz, ‘LGBT Issues in Surrogacy: Present and Future Challenges’ in Eric Scott Sills (ed), Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy: International Clinical Practice and Policy Issues (Cambridge University Press 2016) 57. 83