By Nicole Gregory, contributing writer
When two young men, Elad Davash, an Israeli citizen, and Andrew Banks, an American whose parents were born in Canada, got married in Toronto in 2010, they had several reasons for doing so. They were in love, they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and, as a married couple in Canada, Andrew would be able to sponsor Elad for a U.S. visa, since at the time there was no federal recognition of gay marriage in the U.S.
Six years later they were delighted to become parents of twin baby boys. But their happy family life was threatened when they needed passports to move to the U.S. and the genetics of their twin sons was questioned.
The story is told in a new book by Cal State Fullerton professor of developmental psychology and the director of the Twin Studies Center Nancy L. Segal called “Gay Fathers, Twin Sons: The Citizenship Case That Captured the World.” Published in August by Roman & Littlefield, it’s a story full of legal twists and turns in law, surrogacy, and sometimes strange realities of twins.
A twin herself, Segal has authored many books about twins, including “Deliberately Divided,” about a New York City adoption agency that secretly separated twins and triplets in the 1960s.
In her new book, she recounts how Andrew and Elad Davash-Banks sought and found a young woman to be their egg donor through an agency and then located a surrogate mother. Through in vitro fertilization using sperm from both men and the donated eggs, the surrogate mother received viable embryos.
To the surprise of everyone, not one but two embryos were implanted and began to develop — and it was later discovered that one carried the genes of Andrew and the other carried the genes of Elad. This rare occurrence is called heteropaternal twins.
Two healthy baby boys, named Aiden and Ethan, were born minutes apart on Sept. 16, 2016. Their extended Israeli and American families were thrilled, and a month later the boys’…
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