New York Senate Bill S9316: State Law Would Swap ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ for ‘Gestating Parent’ and ‘Non-Gestating Parent’ in Family Court Statutes
In the latest triumph of ideology over sanity, New York Democrats have rammed through Senate Bill S9316, a bill so absurd it reads like a rejected Saturday Night Live sketch—except it’s real, it just passed both houses of the legislature, and it’s now sitting on Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk waiting to become law.
If signed, the bill doesn’t just tweak a few statutes. It systematically erases the words “mother” and “father” from key sections of New York’s family law. “Mother” becomes the clinical, dehumanizing “gestating parent.” “Father” is reduced to “non-gestating parent.” “Paternity” proceedings? Now “parentage” cases. A “putative father” is demoted to an “alleged parent.” All of this surgical language butchery targets child custody, child support, surrogacy agreements, assisted reproduction, and domestic relations law.
Sponsor Sen. Luis Sepúlveda and his Democrat colleagues insist this is a harmless “modernization” for the brave new world of IVF, surrogacy, and same-sex parenting. They claim it’s just about inclusivity. Right. Because nothing says “inclusive” like forcing court documents to pretend biology doesn’t exist and turning parents into medical categories on a clipboard. This isn’t progress—it’s the final stage of a cultural revolution that has spent years denying basic human reality: that mothers gestate and give birth, and fathers provide the other half of the genetic equation. Now Albany wants to scrub those truths from the law books like they’re dirty words.