Trans man who gave birth loses legal battle to be registered as father on birth certificate
The first transgender man who gave birth has lost his legal battle to be registered as the father on his child's birth certificate.
MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) previously reported how Freddy McConnell, 32, had transitioned from female to male before giving birth in 2018. To do so, he had stopped taking testosterone treatment so his menstrual cycle would restart and had undergone artificial insemination using sperm from a donor.
But before becoming pregnant, he had applied for a gender recognition certificate that would list him as a male, which meant he was legally male when his child was born. When he went to register the birth, however, he was informed by the registrar that he could only be listed as the mother.
Since then, McConnell has been embroiled in a legal battle to have that changed to the father.
This past week, he was dealt a blow when a court of appeals ruled against him and upheld an earlier high court verdict that defined motherhood as being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person who does so was considered a man or a woman in law.
In its ruling, a panel headed by lord chief justice, Lord Burnett, said the panelists were in favor of the right of a child born to a transgender parent to know the reality of its birth and their parent's status, rather than the parent's right to be recognized on the birth certificate by their legal gender.
Burnett found that "although for most purposes a person must be regarded in law as being of their acquired gender after the certificate has been issued, where an exception applies, they are still to be treated as having their gender at birth."
Focusing on the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, which allows people in the UK who have gender dysphoria to change their legal gender, Burnett said the parliament had not "decoupled the concept of mother from gender."
He said that, in the context of IVF and surrogacy, the parliament had made it clear that the person who gave birth was always described as the mother of the child. even if it was not her egg that was fertilized.
He also said that any interference with McConnell's rights to family life caused by birth registration documents describing him as the mother when he was living as the child's father could be justified by the need to maintain a "clear and coherent scheme of registration of births."
In response, Andrew Spearman, McConnell’s solicitor at the law firm Laytons, said such a "narrow interpretation of the Gender Recognition Act" would force all transgender people to choose between being a parent and having full recognition of their gender.
"The judgment asserts the term 'mother' and 'father' are not gender-bound while simultaneously forcing registration according to the transgender individual’s birth gender," he said. "This is not only an unjustifiable interference in his rights to a family and private life, but even domestic legislation in the UK birth allows other individuals on birth certificates to be identified simply as 'parents.'"
McConnell similarly said it was "distressing to be a trans person and have your most fundamental rights overlooked" and criticized the ruling for setting the rights of a child and parent in conflict as it did not reflect reality.
"I have never heard any birthing trans man saying they would want to hide their children’s origins from them,” he said. “There is an assumption that trans people feel shame which isn’t the reality," he said.
However, he added that he wasn't giving up and that he was planning to take the case to the Supreme Court. "We knew this was going to be a long fight and it’s not over yet. I am not despairing. I feel very motivated to continue with this. This affects many more people than me."