Trans-man who gave birth is a Guardian Journalist

I can imagine a Guardian editorial meeting.

‘What have we got for this week?’
‘There’s a war on somewhere’
‘Too expensive to travel. Do they have WiFi there?’
‘Someone said something stupid on the Internet’
‘We’ve already that covered on pages 1-34, 36-60, the sporting pages, and in the sudoku. Anything else?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Are you royalty?’
‘No’
‘Where you kidnapped by aliens?’
‘No...’
‘Then it’s not a story.’
‘... but I’ve got a moustache.’

Thank you for your comment MirrorMouse. This is the reality for most people around me in my life.

Not also forgetting the couple of close friends who later have found out that the 'father' listed, who was the husband of their mother, was in fact not the biological father...

MirrorMouse for practical reasons it was never obligatory to name the father. So your case is completely different, as you've named the mother.

Times today:

Trans man who gave birth loses anonymity

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-man-who-gave-birth-loses-fight-for-anonymity-3brkkwt52?shareToken=707d47fa8b6cbdb494aa9cae6cd378ec

I would have preferred anonymity be retained purely for the sake of the child, but the parent had already voluntarily blown that in a Guardian article and the documentary.

It doesn't feel great reading this thread as a lesbian mum. My child's birth certificate record's her mother and her second parent as my wife and not the details of the anonymous sperm donor. That birth certificate doesn't record her biological/genetic parentage. But it does record her legal parents and importantly her social parents - the women who look after her every day and take responsibility for her upbringing and wellbeing.
Some of the arguments in this thread tend towards the view that this is some sort of a con or a sham. It isn't. It reflects the child's life. The alternative is to go back to the previous position where the non-birth mum had to adopt the child in court proceedings. Who does that help?

And how does it help the child to tell her that she has a dad? We tell her she has two mums, she knows whose tummy she grew in and whose egg she grew from, and that there was a kind sperm donor, a man whose sperm fertilised the egg allowing me to get pregnant at a clinic. In the sense of the dads she sees around her who look after her friends, it's reasonable to tell her she doesn't have a dad. That is the social reality.

Not read the whole thread, but surely this is really about surrogacy and setting useful precedents for men.

I wonder who is funding.....

"All children should be able to have their legal parents correctly and accurately recorded on their birth certificates"

And yet this person wants to falsify their child's birth certificate by listing themself as the father....?

Great posts from Victoria, Merry and Jacky on this, I agree it’s time to scrap the GRC because it doesn’t really serve its purpose in practice and is naively conceived and is being widely ignored in favour of self ID by lots of people anyway. So we need to start again with a national debate without using any euphemisms and tiptoeing about, on how we are going to deal together as a society with this set of issues revolving around identity because they create a clash of rights which affects everyone in society.

*other country, not third country.

the long form was always the requirement in the circumstances involving third country officialdom that my post referred to.

thought you did need the long form birth cert to get a passport. I seem to remember in the dim and distant past getting a copy in order to get mine

You do now due to changes in immigration policy. That wasn't always the case.

Ah, Fred McConnell, I'd forgotten about Fred.

One of the two self obsessed teeds (the other being Paris Lees) who caused me to ditch the Graun many moons ago.

The ruling should reflect the interests of the baby and only the baby. I'm not confident it will though, such is the guddle lying about sex has created.

I strongly disagree on the “not having children” statement - trans people include a vast spectrum of people (like any other group) and there’s no reason why they cannot be as loving parents as anyone else.

The mind boggles at some people’s entitlement to think that what they want trumps science

I thought you did need the long form birth cert to get a passport. I seem to remember in the dim and distant past getting a copy in order to get mine.

Also, if this person wants to pick and choose the origins of their child on the birth cert, can I remove my DS’s father from his, considering he’s an abusive alcoholic twat who has been forbidden by SS to see his child. DS wants to change his last name to mine. At the moment he can’t because he needs both parents’ permission. If this parent is allowed to piss about with what’s on their child’s birth cert, then all parents should be allowed to, at any point they choose, because facts don’t matter anymore.

trans people should not be allowed to have children.

That's one of the most unpleasant, unreasonable things I have read on MN. Nothing gives you the right to say that.

You don't need the full certificate

You do in some circumstances. Registering DD for the school system specifically required the full birth certificate...

Sorry apparently you do. I'm not sure that was always the case.

For my residency visa in a non eu country I also needed an apostilled full birth certificate. This was in a Middle Eastern country and I can only imagine what they might make of a child with no recorded mother. At best, it would make the process more difficult. At worst, impossible.

If you start saying people who belong to a particular group shouldn't have children

I know, and I'm not really an extremist I promise It just makes me so angry that this poor kid is going to grow up being gaslit from the start by their mother, and that poor baby who was "breastfeeding" from their father who was on some horrific cocktail nod drugs to force lactation. These people are totally selfish and not thinking about their children at all. But of course lots of parents are like that.

Possibly, but I’m thinking of a family member who is current,y applying for an eu member state passport based on their parents being from that country. There was a lot of proof needed to demonstrate that specifically their mother had been born in that country, and that they were their birth mother. This child’s papers would have proved very problematic in that regard.

A birth certificate is a statement of biological fact. Not a piece of fiction to bolster the parents personal version of ‘reality’.

what will happen if it ever wants to apply for a passport, a visa, residency in another country? The UK could as a result of this ruling reconfigure systems and processes to accommodate a no-mother birth certificate, but the rest of the world probably won’t. I can foresee quite a lot of difficulty there

Foundling children have no parents listed. The short form birth certificate of all children in the UK only has the child's details and no mention of the parents. You don't need the full certificate.

It’s the possibility of the space for “mother” being left blank that worries me- not just for this specific child, but for the precedent that sets.

For this child, what will happen if it ever wants to apply for a passport, a visa, residency in another country? The UK could as a result of this ruling reconfigure systems and processes to accommodate a no-mother birth certificate, but the rest of the world probably won’t. I can foresee quite a lot of difficulty there.

As for the precedent, I worry in a Handmaids tale sort of a theme about there being the possibility of severing the link between giving birth and being the child’s mother. Possibly this can be justly accommodated for this child, as we do with adoption, but again, the knock on effect of setting the precedent that men can give birth- what might that do to maternity protections?

The thing I can get my head round is how female bodies get in the news for giving birth, and male bodies hit the headlines for sporting prowess, and this is apparently progress