According to the Williams Institute, currently throughout the United States, there is around 16,000 LGBT couples that are raising roughly 22,000 or more adopted child in the United States alone (Gates). Even though these statistics may seem high, there are still many individuals that do not have or struggle to get the opportunity to adopt or foster children in the LGBT community. The LGBT community should have equal adoption and fostering rights compared to heterosexual couples.
When it comes to adoption, there is a long list of struggles that same sex couples could go through. A struggle these couples could be impacted with is being prohibited to adopt or foster children because religious reasons from the adoption agencies. In states like Michigan, North Dakota, and Virginia, adoption and fostering of a child to a LGBT couple could be denied because of religious reasons (Khimm). Many children throughout
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Many adoption agencies require that couples be married to adopt a child. So prior to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, many married same sex couples were given adoption preference (Khimm). The married couples would given preference because it was much harder for same-sex couples to get married before the ruling. Another impact was on lesbian mothers in Utah. "In June, a federal judge in Utah ordered that married lesbian couples who use sperm donors be recognized as legal mothers from birth" (Khimm). This is very important to lesbian couples who just became mothers because if this law was not in effect, someone could try to take their child away from them. A law in Michigan could potentially prohibit LGBT couples from adopting. In Michigan, a law saying that adoption agencies cannot allow same-sex couples to adopt because of religious reasons has been passed(Beitsch) . This could affect many children and couples within the state of Michigan that want children or want to be