For the first time in Britain, same-sex parents have been registered on their child's birth certificate.

The couple, Natalie Woods and Betty Knowles, countersigned the certificate after their child, Lily-May Betty Woods, was born. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, implemented at the beginning of the month, permits same-sex partners to be treated as parents on a child's birth certificate. The couple took advantage of this concession.

The child was born after Miss Woods became pregnant using sperm from a donor. The previous legislation made no such concession for same-sex couples - Miss Woods would have been the only one listed as a parent on the birth certificate.

Pressure groups who say that a child's birth certificate should accurately reflect the child's biology have protested the new legislation. Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "Birth certificates should reflect how a baby is generated. As much as you try to play around with the terminology, the biology reflects what has happened and one day the child will ask about their father." ~ London Telegraph, Apr 19