Introduce todays speaker, dr. Nancy segal, from the department of and counsel at university bulletin. Some of us in the room, nancy, for her. Ill just leave it its many better and i wont get into this specifics. After nancy completed her ph. D. At the university of chicago, her first position was here in the department of psychology, university of minnesota, where she accepted a position, the position as the assistant director for, the Minnesota Center for twin for adoption, for twin adoption and adoption. Yeah, we have different salaries. I get in anyway. She was very well suited for this position. She here from chicago with a lot of expertise in enthusiasm for twin research. She also came with a commitment try to repair our borings academic writings. I dont know if you remember, but you were really keen on getting us to write better. She succeeded in helping make the grade apart. Twins study, really one of the worlds most famous studies in psychology. I dont think you succeeded much with her writing, though. After about a decade here, nancy left minnesota to join the Department Psychology in fullerton, where she remains today. There she is, established an Impactful Research program on twins thats really worldwide for the Innovative Research designs, nancy is used things like i wont try to define them. Maybe shell talk about, i dont know, virtual twins or look alikes that are unrelated. In 2005, her contribue actions to turn research were a receipt of the shields lifetime contribution to twin Research Award granted jointly by the behavioral genetics associate and the International Society for twin louise finch for twin. Among nancys many talents has been her ability to convey the significance of twin research to a general audience. She has done this primarily through a series of highly acclaimed books. I think you must have almost ten books now, and its nine now. I was close. I didnt count it, but i just looked at the list list in these books shes she describes not only why twins have fascinated scholars literally literally millennia but also humanizes the twins by telling their fascinating and i think today shes going to share some of these stories with us. And i think also if youre interested, well be able to maybe get a book by book from this. Im sure excited it for us to do so. In any case, please join me in welcoming nancy back to the university. Well, good morning, everyone. It is such a pleasure to be here and to introduce my two new books to this audience, both written in 2023. As matt said, i was a postdoc here at the University Minnesota and a Research Associate that lasted for nine years. And i worked very closely with tom bouchard on, the study which twins raised apart and for a new ph. D. , was a dream job. It was fascinating. It was famous. It was controversial and always exciting. And i got to be with the twins that other people just saw in the newspapers. So i also want to thank matt for the wonderful introduction and think well well start going now. Im going to talk about two books today and take a break after the first one for questions and answers and then go on to the second one. So i wanted to start out with gay fathers, twin sons, the citizenship case that captured the world this was a high profile lawsuit filed by the divorce banks couple a same sex couple andrew and a lot against the Us State Department secretaries of state Rex Tillerson and then mike pompeo, the lawsuit was filed 2018 and settled in 2020. Now the case details will become as i go through the talk. But what you need to know just for now is that they were suing on behalf the fact that one of their twin sons was us citizenship. Okay, now this was an extraordinary tale of ordinary people being caught up in extraordinary circumstances and. The person who captured this concept so beautifully was fiona hill, a Foreign Affairs specialist. Her book, there is nothing for you here, which ive read, by the way, just excellent. And she says that the Life Experiences of individuals who find themselves the spotlight by choice or by chance shaped countrys written history. And that is so true in this, because the decision of the couple to go public with their story and, with their lawsuit has really improved the lives of so many other same couples in that same situation. So how did i learn about this case, i was reading the Angeles Times january 27th, 2018, and i saw this headline, these were born 4 minutes apart, but only one is a us citizen and i could hardly believe it. How could that be . I just couldnt figure it out. But i was going to learn now before i go on to tell you all about this, we have to just talk about the two types of twins, because this is actually important for the story. I didnt know if these were identical or fraternal, i knew there were two boys. So we have two types of twins. The identical or minor psychotic who share all their genes in common. Having split in single fertilized egg within the first two weeks after conception. And then we have twins who can be either same sex or opposite sex, who result when a woman releases two eggs at the same time and they are separately fertilized. Different from the father. Now, most people know about these two types, but there are some fascinating variations within each type. And the one you need to know about today, a type of atypical twinning that results in hetero paternal twins because of a process super precondition. These twins have the same mothers, but they have different fathers and they share 25 of their genes on average by which is like making them have siblings. Now, if a woman has relations with the different men in time, thats how these can i mean, they could also result could have twins can see the different times the same partner but they be hetero paternal. It happens because theres a 12 to 48 hour window once over released for fertilization and the 7 to 10 day window in which survive in the uterine tract. Now the frequency of kind of twinning is really unknown. Its presumed to be rare. In fact, the only really large scale study ever done on the frequency was in 1992, published in the twin Research Journal and he concluded that point a 1 of disputed paternity cases involved hetero paternal twinning. Thats a tiny little amount. But when he narrowed it down to just the fraternal twins. It jumped to 2. 4, but nevertheless the the writer, the scientist wenk said that he probably this is underestimated because most of the women in his sample young and we know that fraternal twinning is more common among older women. I also wrote in a 2020 paper based on a case report that i think the frequency has been underestimated and why . Because a lot of cases are not detected. And even those that are detected are often not reported. And i know of two cases that have never been in the literature. So must be others now what me to this particular case, because i get a lot of cases over my desk all the time. This one just had so many contemporary themes of timely interest, same sex marriage, egg donation, surrogacy by family, citizens, and immigration. Of course township and was again ordinary people. Quite an extraordinary circumstances. And with the overturning of roe v wade in june of 2022, which actually happened at the end of my book, not in the beginning, writing part of individual threats to freedom. Threats to individual freedom were a problem. Now, as i go through the slides, youll see some that are numbered and those that are numbered conform to the different chapters of the book. So what i wanted to do here was to really humanize the people. You know, there was a lot written about them in the press. They were on television. You didnt get to know them as people. I did. And it was absolutely fascinating. But i have say that when i first learned about the case, i jumped it. That was 2018 and i was busy writing deliberately about the new york city study of twins to intentionally separated and then secretly studied until they turned 12. I get near that case. I couldnt get through the lawyers, i couldnt get through the family. I couldnt get get them through the media because as the lawsuit is pending, they dont want you speaking publicly. And it wasnt they didnt like the of the book. Everybody thought the book idea was great. But they worried that their clients Say Something that will jeopardize the case. So i had to be put on hold. I will admit that i secretly spoke to one of the sisters of one of the men, but that was about it anyway. Who is Andrew Devine . Andrew banks at this point. He was born in santa monica in january of 1981, and he was the first openly gay student, Beverly Hills high school. He faced a lot of discrimination because it nevertheless, he was a decorated athlete and an outstanding student and volunteered in his free time as a way of coping with the discrimination he he joined teen line which was a service thats conducted by teens. 14 is a 24 hour telephone line that helps teens cope with various types of problems. He loved International Travel, and he was very high in leadership skills and always fought hard for his beliefs beliefs. His partner elijah weisz was an israeli born in march of 1985, and he was a very talented young pupil. He was accepted to the prestigious Tel Aviv School for the arts, but he discrimination on two counts. He was a sephardic with a history in spain where his family came from. So he lived among the ashkenazi in tel aviv, faced a lot of discrimination because of that. And then he was rejected by his parents and face when he came out as gay, he was in the army in a very elite intelligence called unit 8200. He was a College Counselor in the overseas department. He liked to help people and helped students adjust to coming to a new country. He also International Travel and was very high in leadership and fought for his beliefs. So the couple called a fabulous couple by their friends met at Tel Aviv University when andrew was getting a masters degree in International Relations and a lot was getting a bachelor of arts degree in literature and World Affairs and they married in cannes in 2010. Why canada . Because canada allowed same sex marriage at a year when the us did not, nor did israel. The us does now as of 15 with obergefell and hodges case, but in israel still cannot marry if youre gay. But gay marriages are recognized if performed also it turned out that andrew was a citizen of he was a dual citizen of the us and canada because his parents came from. So in about 2015 2016 they decided to have a family and in canada what they do is they practice altruistic or compassion surrogacy and what that is that donors and surrogates are reimbursed for expenses only. They are not paid any of a fee or honorarium and thats very different in the United States. And this appeal to andrew and a lot a great deal. I asked the couples attorney, michelle flower they, why women would do this if theyre not getting paid for it. And she said that they feel like a gift because they see joy that brings a childless couples. And many of these women do not intend to have children themselves, although some do and she said that she has some egg donors that come six and seven times to donate eggs. Now, i also spoke to amanda adams and i can use these names freely because i have all the permission and theyre in the book. Amanda adams was a surrogate who carried the two twin boys and i asked her why she did this. And she had a very interesting personal story. She had a little girl of her own and. It was a very, very difficult pregnancy to the point where was told to terminate the child. And she said she was not going to do. But if everything ended up all right and she had a healthy child, she was to be a surrogate for another couple. And so she was for another couple. And then she met andrew and a lot. And it was very close in time to her second delivery, but she didnt care. She said, i fell in love with him and i wanted to do this for them now. Andrew and a actually conceived hetero paternal, they picked a very young donor and they dont know anything about what they. Know a lot about the donor, but not her name, right . Thats anonymous. So they picked a young donor because. Young women tend to produce a lot of eggs. And this woman produced 40, which is really a lot. And then they were mixed with. The of both men and the both men did not care whose child, whose if it was one and one or this one or that one, they didnt care. But it turned out that five days when this is the optimal time for embryo implantation, the top two embryos were almost conceived by elad and one by andrew. So it was really an ideal situation situation. Okay, well before i get to this one, let me just say that that it was a kind of difficult pregnancy for amanda, too. This twin ship, because what happened was that one of the little boys that was going through brain sparing which is when oxygen is denied to the brain and so this kind of an adaptive response that goes on where a energy is an oxygen is redistributed from from the heart but its the very situation the other boy was not in the least bit in danger, but the other one was going through intrauterine retardation. So they had to be very careful about the delivery because that one little boy was actually safer outside, woman inside. But the other boy had to stay in longer. So its like a delicate dance to figure out when deliver the babies they were delivered at just under 33 weeks and they were actually than they thought so it worked out just perfectly all right so now we come to the trouble so the trouble was crossing the border when they had very cruel questioning so they went to the us consulate in toronto in january of 2017 with the idea of moving to the us. Thats what they wanted. Thats where andrew was from a lot, always wanted to live in the us, loved california. And that was the plan. So the boys are four months old at this time. The boys, aiden and ethan. So they filed papers. They, they were told that their portfolio was complete. They the fee and all of a sudden the officer back and stress asking a series of really rude and invasive questions such as who was the father and where do these children come from and are they genetically related . And the couple was shocked, not prepared for this line of questioning. And it turns out that officers rely on the Foreign Affairs manual, which gives you guidelines but not hard and fast rules for who can gain us citizenship. And once they make a decision. Those decisions are rarely contested. She also required another dna test from these men. They had a dna test or they hadnt brought with them because had documents from canada saying that both men are the legal parents of both children and the children were born. While these parents were legally married. So they had all that evidence, but it was not accepted. So they had to go out and get another test which cost 1,000 cad in order to at least get a passport for one child. Ultimately, the decision was that aidan, whose biological father was andrew, got the us passport and the child got a tourist visa which allowed him into the us six months. All right. So the couple comes to los angeles and of course the is ticking on this and i call this chapter immigration equality policy practices and the twins ship. So here at options they they wanted hire an attorney the problem was in 2017 they may remember it was when trump a ban against entry immigrants from seven muslim nations so a lot of attorneys in that line of work were busy and the one who was available all told he should adopt his child. Andrew said, im the legal parent so the guy said, well, i really no advice for you. So another option was to apply a green card, but thats very long and arduous process. They could live in or in israel. Well, they didnt want to live in either country going to israel, possible option. But that also can be a long, drawn out process. And andrew did not want his sons, his only children, to eventually be in the army and living apart. Not an option either because this is a new and would have destroyed the fabric of the parents and the children. Fortunately one of them heard about immigration. You quality directed by a wonderful named aaron moss. Its a group that works probono and does litigation with, a law firm in this case, sullivan and cromwell, that also works probono. Let me show you the mission of immigration, equality. Theyre based in new york city for over 25 years. We have worked to secure a safe haven, freedom and equality for the lgbtq and hiv positive communities through direct legal services, policy, advocacy impact, litigation. We support immigrants who face discriminate nation based on who they are and whom they love. Now, theyre very selective about the cases that they take and they get thousands of calls and letters and communications day. But the timing was perfect. After two online interviews. Andrew lloyds case was accepted. And heres why. Because immigration equality had three other similar cases involving same sex couples that had children born, transnational, and they were having problems bringing the children to the us and gaining citizenship for them. So the idea of immigration equality was to bundle these as a package. Now, i met aron aron morris it tricky but its an interesting story. I was in new york city in 2022, in june for the book Party Celebration of deliberately divided and aron morris. I figured id see him on zoom and be no problem, but i got an email from him and he says, i just heard from the guys meaning andrew in a lot and im happy to meet with you monday this was a sunday im happy to meet with you monday from 530 to 7 at the wine bar. Then seven in new york city. Well, monday night was my night in new york. I planned a celebration with my boyfriend, but of course that all went by the wayside. I was not giving up this opportunity, so i met him on this crowded street. I have my tape recorder, but thank god for iphones and i was able to transcribe that. He said i drank he drank wine. I encouraged that and anyway, we talked a lot about the case but i brought up the township angle to him because said to him, you know, in all honesty, if twins had not been involved in this case. I not have jumped on board or been that inte