Baby could become first person born in England or Wales without a legal mother

[hungryhippie]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5817699/Baby-person-born-England-Wales-without-legal-mother.html

Hi, long time lurker here. Just came across this story online. If this ruling gets through I imagine it will open a whole other can of worms.
How can the law say the child has no Mother?

*Millions of children have no citizenship or legal identity globally because mothers in many countries cannot register a birth alone. That is why it is a feminist issue and a human rights issue that the birth mother is the primary piece of information to get a baby a legal birth certificate.

That someone should start a legal case against such an important right as the birth mother being what allows legal registration is selfish beyond belief, given how important that principle is to establish globally for all children.*

Oops pressed post by accident... The above point shows up the supposedly "intersectional" trans ideology as actually one for the privileged one per centers. Fuck the plebs.

But Polynerd this is a matter of public interest as if successful it will establish a legal precedent, and one that could have a significant impact on women and children (and potentially men too). It is also in the public domain as the court case is a matter of public record. No names are given and strict reporting restrictions are in place to make sure the child is not identified. I suppose there could be some parallel with abortion as it is a conflict of interest between mother and child, but I don't see that it is about the mother's body, but about rights associated with identity for both mother and child.

And that has unpleasant overtones of the abortion debate, in which the woman's body is a matter of public, rather than private, issue.

I agree some of the comments are getting over the top but come on - this has nothing to do with a woman's body (apart from the obvious problem that the "woman" in this case says he is, in fact, a man.)

Once the baby is born, he/she is an entirely separate human being - with her own body and rights. The birth cert isn't an opportunity for the parent to push forward an agenda dear to the parent's heart. It is a legal document recording the birth of the new human being - the mother and father are bit players - not stars of the show. The baby should have the facts recorded as accurately as possible. if she then wants to refer to the person who gave birth to her as "Daddy" away with her. But the fact is that a woman gave birth to a baby and passed on her mitochondrial dna to that baby.

I am adopted. I have a very visceral response to state-sponsored lies about recording the birth of children. And yet we seem to be going back there ...

Who is backing the case and what are the wider implications?

In Scotland, woman and female were redefined.
Fairplay for Women comment:

"Last year while we were all looking the other way and distracted by the UK government’s proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act the word woman was stolen from us. It was sneakily done by the Scottish parliament and hidden behind a smoke screen. That smoke screen was The Gender Representation on Public Boards Bill.

The Bill introduced the ‘gender representation objective’ – a target that women should make up 50% of non-executive board membership.

The purpose of this bill was admirable. It was to help women overcome the institutional sexism we suffer due to our sex. Positive action to redress the imbalances that have arisen from centuries of historical disadvantage. It was to acknowledge the reality that institutionalised inequality and sexist attitudes stop most women from reaching their full potential in public life. Financial barriers, income inequality, the gender pay gap, sexist attitudes, gender stereotyping, women’s disproportionate share of caring responsibilities, the undervaluing of women’s paid work, and media portrayals of women, to name but a few influences, all play a role in the sexism that prevents a fair number of women being involved in public life.

But in a cruel twist of irony it was also to be the perfect trojan horse to steal the very meaning of the words woman and female from us." (continues)

fairplayforwomen.com/scottish_stole_woman/

Very significant and crucial point made by Jamieandwordswo Thankyou for your post. This is not just about the feelings of this individual transman. It is the child’s identity document not the parents’, so the child’s right to accurate information about their identity must come first, as well as considering the wider implications of any decision. I’m not clear though that permitting a certificate naming only a father necessarily endangers the rights of a child to be registered to only a mother. But absolutely, the importance of a mother’s name on a birth certificate needs to be respected.

Are there not any circumstances where a birth certificate can already be issued without a mother being named? What happens for a child found abandoned? Or for a child legally adopted by two men - or one man, for that matter - my understanding is that adoptive parents are re-written onto birth certificates of their children?

Whatever happens with the legal paperwork, this parent can raise their child with whatever beliefs about gender they like, and to call them whatever name they like too (to a point at least). We can’t legislate against this child being raised to call their TIF parent ‘Dad’, and nor should anyone want to, tbh. A rose by any other name and all. But I don’t believe that the state should collude with their beliefs to the extent of denying reality on another person’s identity document - this person gestated and birthed their child, they are that child’s biological mother, however they identify themselves.

Read Mumsnet. All the claims that if men were the ones who gave birth we would have better rights. So, here we have a man who has given birth, but that isn't right either. Go figure.

Anti-choice people want to dictate to women (but not analogously to men) what women can do with their female bodies.

Anti-choice people also confuse fetuses (still growing inside the woman’s body) with babies (who have already been born and who live independently from the body of their mother) .

^^^That’s an important discussion but it’s not what’s at issue here.

This case is about a born child whose birth mother (ie the biological woman who gave birth to the baby, but who ‘lives as a man’ and is legally recognised for official documentation purposes as ’being a man’.) ... is going to court on the basis of ‘being a man’ for legal purposes, to seek to obscure an important bit of truth from the baby’s personal history and the baby’s official legal identity narrative document. By registering themselves as a father to their child not a mother.

Noone is criticising families where there is no mother, or there are two fathers, or an egg donor or a surrogate were involved in having the baby or bringing it up.

The problem is that the person who gave birth to the baby wants the legal fiction of the GRA to be extended to cover one of the most fundamental narratives of the baby’s life.

The baby is an independent being with their own rights and interests and on that basis a baby’s parent’s GRA arguably should not be able to affect the baby’s documentation.

GRA is about the adult individual’s legal documents, it does not give powers to change their family members’ legal documents.

The priority is the child’s human rights to know their own story, which should take precedent over a parental preference to be known as a man or as a woman.

There is whole history of emotionally damaging children, where their right to personal knowledge of their origins has been blocked because they have been actively or by omission, lied to.

If this case were won by the baby’s parent (I don’t see how it could be, but hypothetically..) then I would assume that would mean that the GRA would have to be changed, ie that outcome would open the GR Act up for any other amendments to be made in Parliament, at the same time that this change is going through to put the GRA in step with this bit of case law.

R0wantrees
👏👏👏

In Ireland there are some TRA groups lobbying to ensure inclusive language in new policies and legislation that will be drawn up in response to the referendum result asserting women's right to abortion.

discussed here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3260503-Trans-Voices-For-Appeal-Complain-About-Together-For-Yes-Campaign

Also following on from Rowan's post, an AIBU thread:

Well, it’s happened... the trans activists have waded into the 8th amendment issue in Ireland
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/3265165-Well-it-s-happened-the-trans-activists-have-waded-into-the-8th-amendment-issue-in-Ireland

Read Mumsnet. All the claims that if men were the ones who gave birth we would have better rights. So, here we have a man who has given birth, but that isn't right either. Go figure.

Lol, I think even you know what bollocks this is, don't you Gib?

There seems to be something strange going on with the message / report option.

Pallisers the state-sponsored lying on birth certificates in the bad old days was done for cultural reasons based on misogynistic, patriarchal religion, which sought to assert its power via the law of the land, making its religious views applicable to everyone whether they believed in it or not.

The TRA movement looks to want to put in a very similar set up.

Cwenthryth, adoptive parents are not written on to birth certificates, which are a record of a child’s birth. They are written on to an adoption register as the adoptive parent/parents. A copy of that can then be used for identity in the same way a long form birth certificate is. It is increasing information about a child’s legal situation, not removing it.

But there is no legal adoptive ‘mother.’ There are adoptive parents. Their sex is irrelevant as it is an adoption. The birth mother is on the birth certificate.

Cwenthryth, adoptive parents are not written on to birth certificates, which are a record of a child’s birth. They are written on to an adoption register as the adoptive parent/parents. A copy of that can then be used for identity in the same way a long form birth certificate is. It is increasing information about a child’s legal situation, not removing it.

Well that's true - up to the point where the original birth certificate was not available to the actual subject of that birth cert - the baby. And that baby generally had no way to find it either.

I am not talking about adoptions now - but in the not so distant past. Where records were hidden and obfuscated so that the aspirational "these adoptive parents are your mum and dad" was the only record the state was interested in making available. And in Ireland (and who knows what went on elsewhere) actual birth certificates were also falsified.

Children are entitled to a simple bare statement of how they came into being - date time place parents. It is hard to get that accurate with a father but not with a mother. Every human being in the history of the world has come out of a woman's womb.

Abandoned children go on the abandoned children’s register. I believe they do get a birth certificate which records their social worker. If they are later adopted, the adoptive parents are then on the adoption register but not added to the original birth certificate. As adding them would be a lie.

Sorry, xpost.

Thanks for the clarification Jamie. There was a poster on here recently (of the you’re-all-anti-trans variety) talking about the ‘legal fiction’ of them being listed as mother on their child’s birth certificate although they were the adoptive mother (using it as an argument for self ID, somehow). Should have known they were making it all up.

They might be from another country.

They were arguing re UK law.
Anyways glad to be better informed (although now thinking I should check your info too and not just be so naive to believe anything anyone writes authoritavely online, although you are convincing and have written well!)

This might help: deedpolloffice.com/change-name/law/birth-certificates

It shows actual copies of long form birth and adoption entries, with explanations.

Just to get all feminist for a moment . Historically, men went to a lot of trouble to make sure they and no one else were the father of their children. Apart from the odd claims of royal babes in bed pans, the birth of a prince was a public occasion in that it was witnessed. It is the one thing you can be sure of with a birth, who was the one doing it. Fathers, that was always a matter of trust or control. It is, if you like, a prime evolutionary reason in humans and other animals for males controlling access to females. To just ignore that and try and pretend it doesn't matter, about the biggest insult to mothers you can imagine. Plus trying to lie to a child about the one thing they should be sure of seems incredibly selfish and misguided.

Thank you somedyke for saying what I was thinking but couldn't express.