"Transgender man, 34, loses legal battle to be named as the father on his child's birth certificate as Supreme Court refuses to hear his case"

[Malahaha]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8953783/Transgender-man-34-loses-legal-battle-named-father-childs-birth-certificate.html

Don't know if this was already posted but it's a glimmer of hope that soe judges have their heads screwed on tightly.

@EyesOpening

In that video, Freddy mentioned the mother having to adopt her own child(ren), I cant recollect the full circumstances though. If you only have to take things from that list upthread though, I can’t see how you can’t be legally named father except Freddy’s case is different as Freddy gave birth to the child and is therefore the mother

Sorry, I meant ‘a’ mother, I wasn’t referring to Whittle’s wife, I can’t remember if it was a generic mother.

If you get married there is space for both parents on the marriage license. (Only recently did they bother to include a space for the mothers job).

There are laws about not marrying your relatives which I guess may have been an original reason that birth certificate information was put together? Presumably with population growth and people moving around more widely these records are less of an issue now.

I presume it would be recorded as mother on a marriage licence the same as birth certificate. How has this worked so far for gay couples? There must be many families that are NC with parents so maybe they allow some combinations on a marriage license.

@OhHolyJesus

That's true and there wasn't a drop in sperm donors since the anonymity law was scrapped.

The sperm donor is currently named on Freddy's son's birth certificate but if Freddy is named as the father where would the name of the sperm donor go?

SJ could get a copy of this information from HFEA once he turns 18, I don't think they send it to him, how would they know he knew/was told and where he lived to write to him? SJ would only know if he sought it out. If he thought his Freddy was his father he wouldn't know to look, but yes, it is currently recorded correctly on the BC and I hope SJ grows knowing his name and the circumstances of his birth.

It is unlikely that the sperm donor is record on the birth record. Unless a mother is married to the father his details cannot be entered unless he is present at the birth registration. With a sperm donor I would think this unlikely.

You're right Word, I understand now that a sperm donor is not named on the birth certificate but can be found on the HFEA registry...so not anonymous but no parental responsibility and can remain a secret for life as it relies on the mother or parents being honest.

I still find that odd as sperm is pretty key to the process and whoever provides it should be named for the purposes of the child, though I also understand why commissioning parents get a new birth certificate with their names on once the parental order is agreed and the birth certificate for adopted children exists but remains sealed. I don't know exactly how it works in surrogacy arrangements. I think it is the same so the surrogate mother remains on the sealed version.

My only issue with this is if the child is not told of their genes and where they came from. I just think children deserve to know the truth of where they came from.

If sperm donors were the legal fathers of the children born from their donations then they would also be financially liable for their upkeep which I am guessing a donor wouldn’t want! The law expressly states that a man who donates sperm through a registered clinic does not become the father of any children born as a result.
As the birth certificate doesn’t even require details of a father and will often register someone who isn’t the biological father, I can’t see any need for sperm donors needing to be registered on birth certificates.

Also if you make it a requirement for fathers to be registered then that will have a detrimental impact on women fleeing domestic abuse who don’t want the father involved at all. Or rapists who get the victim pregnant.

I've heard an argument (and I don't necessarily agree) that there should be several people named on a birth certificate:

Who provided the egg
Who provided the sperm
Who was pregnant
Who has parental responsibility/is the legal parent (and whether they adopted the child or got a parental order or adopted as a stepparent etc)

As IVF and surrogacy increases and is set to boom by all accounts and children are born from 'double donors' I think it really is quite important to know who you're related to. I've seen too many "I have 300 siblings" type stories to preside me otherwise.

Freddy wants to be recorded as father or parent and the above would go some way to that but I just can't get past children not having a mother listed. Just the word not being on a BC at all.

I read Sophie Beresiner's column in the Sunday Times at the weekend and she explains that the parental order for Baby M is delayed due to Covid. She understood why Rebecca, the surrogate mother, was listed on the birth certificate (good!) but not why Rebecca's husband was. Mr Beresiner is the biological father (and they used another woman's eggs) but by law Rebecca's husband is, and it's so wives aren't exploited by their husbands. How is this not bleeding obvious?

Right so Whittle became their father through adoption.

There’s different rules about what if anything the law allows adults who have been told or discovered they were born from sperm or egg donation to discover about the donor, including if the donor's name is part of what they can find out. The rights to information depend on when the person was born. There’s a link here that explains it by year of birth: www.dcnetwork.org/solo-mums/your-childs-rights

People born through surrogacy don’t seem to automatically have any rights to get information about whose egg, sperm, or embryo were used for their birth or to know who was pregnant and gave birth to them, depending on how their conception and subsequent legal arrangements happened.

It’s complicated because of all the variables in arrangements between the adults before the birth and afterwards but The Law commission full consultation document has a whole chapter (chapter 10) about the child’s information rights that is worth reading. It describes problems like genetic links from surrogate to child via her egg not always being recorded. Or the original birth certificate records not always being legally available to the person to access, even if they ask for them.

‘10.38: As we mention above, it appears that, contrary to the position on adoption, it is not possible in England and Wales for a person born as a result of a surrogacy arrangement to access their original birth record. The General Register Office agree that, under the current law, it is not possible for it to provide the linking information that would allow a child born of surrogacy to obtain their original birth certificate.’

They also quote academic research that says that parents are more likely to tell their child that they were born from a surrogate than they were to tell them that donor egg or sperm were used, including when they’d been born from the surrogates’ own egg.

The Law Commission suggested legal changes to give new information rights and consistent record keeping. This would include where no IVF was used in the surrogacy. It’s good the law commission covered this because there’s clearly a serious problem when key information isn’t recorded at all, or it has been recorded somewhere but isn’t accessible to people. None of this would cover surrogacy from other countries, though which would bring up all the same questions.

www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/surrogacy/

Donors in the U.K. are limited to 10 families so there is no danger of 300 siblings.

Unfortunately, many people choose to get their donor gametes from outside the U.K. where the rules around limits/anonymity are less strict. Spain and Greece for example are popular places to get donor eggs because women living in poverty sell them.

I'm not sure how you legislate gamete tourism.

For known donors Clymene but there really is nothing to stop men spreading their sperm around, through 'natural insemination' or via the Turkey baster method. Not all sperm donors go through the proper channels so there are no real limits to how many families or children there can be involved. Not that I have any ideas how you police it and I do understand reason from the PP who mentioned not putting the name of the father on the BC due to rape or domestic violence. The family courts aren't always so great at protecting children and mothers and that would be another way for men to abuse....

But the BC should maybe just be a record of birth and not custody/parental responsibility. It hasn't worked like that at all, it's always be automatic and rightly so. I can't really see why it should be any different from how it is now but I do think children should know about their genetics and parents won't always be honest with their kids and at least have the chance to find them if they choose to as adults.

SJ won't go looking for his sperm donor dad if he is raised to believe his mother is his father and Freddy is a magic seahorse human.

British man Simon Wilson sells sperm and wants to 'crack' 1,000 babies.

From 2016 so after the law change for anonymity, though he's clearly not bother about that by going to the papers. Note there are no legal consequences, no arrests and I doubt the HFEA are following him around frantically trying to record where his children are so to write to down on the national register.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3397175/Britain-s-prolific-sperm-donor-fathers-800-children-selling-magic-potion-Facebook-50-pot.html

@OhHolyJesus

For known donors Clymene but there really is nothing to stop men spreading their sperm around, through 'natural insemination' or via the Turkey baster method. Not all sperm donors go through the proper channels so there are no real limits to how many families or children there can be involved. Not that I have any ideas how you police it and I do understand reason from the PP who mentioned not putting the name of the father on the BC due to rape or domestic violence. The family courts aren't always so great at protecting children and mothers and that would be another way for men to abuse....

But the BC should maybe just be a record of birth and not custody/parental responsibility. It hasn't worked like that at all, it's always be automatic and rightly so. I can't really see why it should be any different from how it is now but I do think children should know about their genetics and parents won't always be honest with their kids and at least have the chance to find them if they choose to as adults.

SJ won't go looking for his sperm donor dad if he is raised to believe his mother is his father and Freddy is a magic seahorse human.

But that’s just a natural fact of life that a man can impregnate any number of women. It could be by donating his sperm to female friends or by shagging loads of women without using protection. And actually if you use DIY insemination and not a registered clinic, the donor is the legal father (although mum might still not put him on BC, but he will still be liable for child support if she seeks it).

I just think that if we force women to name fathers on birth certificates, it takes away control from women because if you’re a parent, surely there’s the argument that your kid should not only know who you are but also know you? And it also allows these men control over the child’s upbringing, as they will have equal parental responsibility for the kid too. I think it would be absolutely terrible for women.

Throughout time, many people have been brought up without knowledge of their full paternal genetic background and I think it’s just something we have to live with. We have a system now where kids can find out details about donors in many cases (and I believe many choose not to do so). Yes, there will be cases where maybe they don’t have their full background but I don’t see it as a giant human rights violation that completely overrides all other considerations.

Unless you’re going to do genetic testing on every single newborn, there are only two absolute certainties involved in a birth:

1 That a child was born on a particular day in a particular place
2 That a woman gave birth to that child

Beyond that, you don’t know for sure who else was involved. And if you require it to be proven, there will be some unpleasant consequences.

I so see your point Reality, I do and many over time haven't known who their father is. To be honest I have less of a problem with a person not knowing their father if he's an arsehole, a rapist or a dead-beat dad or even a sperm donor (if he did it the proper way and all the necessary health and STD screening was done) and slightly more of a problem with not knowing your egg donor genetic mother and an even bigger problem with not knowing your biological, birth, surrogate mother. But our biology does count for something and I do think that a child has a right (under the Convention on the rights of the Child) to know where they came from (under identity). That includes fathers as they are half of their DNA.

Freddy's case is about removing status as mother. For obvious reasons everyone knows who the mother is and it's an important relationship in someone's life, even if their mother is shit, even if she died and you didn't get to know her, even if she abandoned you. It's just important facts that we build upon and process and it's part of who we are.

Fathers have a different role and can easily be absent from conception but the mother can't really get away from the pregnancy (if it continues) and the bind that forms in that time isn't something I want to see labelled differently.

I'm thinking more about this and I'm wondering if there is any way or any reason to change it, but I do agree that fathers could use their 'position' on the BC to control women and their children and I hate that this is possible simply because they got a woman pregnant.

Should the status of a BC change to be a record rather than automatic responsibility or should family courts do more? Should the mother get automatic parental responsibility but the father has to apply for it? No. I don't believe that. It's good to explore this but I don't have the answers.

I don't pretend to understand what goes on inside the head of a person like this 'parent'. What I do know is that they are setting that poor baby up for a life of hell and deliberately depriving it of a mother. What sort of person deliberately does that?

Blokes in the internet offering to get women pregnant aren’t ‘donors’ in any recognised legal sense though.
The law only recognises donation in this country as happening in a proper fertility clinic after all the consent forms to be a donor (or accept a donation) have been signed.

Yes Chatty they are basically fathers not donors, but they don't need to be named on BCs by the mothers so don't have shared parental responsibility or legal rights and will only be contacted by the mother if she wants maintenance payments or if the child is told and wants to seek him out at a later date. There is no way of managing how many children are born this way. They could even end up at school together and not know, if the man stays in the same area.

I wonder if a man who becomes a father through an internet sperm donation scenario has ever claimed parental rights to a child born? I doubt it, if they are like that Simon Wilson these men want to spread it about with no consequences and only appear to want some kind of notoriety through media coverage like the link I shared

OR

They don't want to be involved and are fairly insignificant in the child's life. They are not the ones who are arguing to be named as the father on the BC. I guess they make an agreement with the mother not to be named.

I don't know how common it is but it has become more common through Facebook and websites like Pollen Tree. The HFEA has no dealing or influence on this and in a way it's no different from before clinics were created where a woman is pregnant and the dad is just absent.

To me it's different from deliberately creating a child who is lied to about their origins/genetics.

Agree it seems so risky OHJ in so many ways for the child and their mum/s.

Following the NHS Trust story about removing words like mother and breastfeeding, Freddy calls the mothers in Freddy's playgroup (when Freddy's son was a baby) 'humans', though true (and it applies to the babies in the group too) the removal of the distinction serves Freddy and not the mothers in the photo shared (which I didn't attach).

Maybe the women don't mind but their births and breastfeeding should be about them and this pretence of it only affecting a small number of people when it takes away from ALL women is really starting to annoy me.

I'm no fan of Freddy's but would let 'brilliant humans' go as just a bit of a turn of phrase. It's that whole mindset of bollocking on about being marginalised and not expecting people to include trans people that stands out. He's a parent so should rightly be welcomed in parents' groups - to be excluded would be a genuine form of the transphobia they're usually so keen to shout out. I doubt most people in his community have the time or inclination to give a stuff about how he lives his life.

I take your point Brave I don't expect trans people to be lonely by the very nature of them believing they are trans so I agree with Freddy on that. Freddy is a single parent with strong family support so like many other single parents I would expect Freddy not to feel lonely but like many other single parents, might miss having a partner at times. Though Freddy is a single parent very much by choice and design so I think that's very different from say being a single mum who left her partner due to domestic abuse or cheating.

I can't think why trans people would be lonely, from what I can see there is a huge 'community', in person and accessible online, to make friends.

Being a human being is a lonely state, at the end of the day, no matter how many people you surround yourself with, and no matter how you identify.

Being a single parent is especially tough - even when you have the practical support of friends and family.

Am I the only one who thinks the actual pregnancy was selfish?

He'd been taking hormones that were unnatural for a woman, let alone someone trying to conceive. We don't know what effect that could have on a developing fetus.

Women give up alcohol, certain herbs, sports and hot baths to keep their baby safe and sadly still sometimes they're born with a disability or birth defect.
He gambled with his baby and that makes my blood boil.

My son has cp so I know what it feels like to fail your baby. That someone would be so wreckless, even changing their sex in the NHS records to male, this presumably risking missing prenatal care really makes me angry.

We could be called Sperm Provider and Egg Provider instead of Parent 1 and Parent 2.

@BraveBananaBadge

I'm no fan of Freddy's but would let 'brilliant humans' go as just a bit of a turn of phrase. It's that whole mindset of bollocking on about being marginalised and not expecting people to include trans people that stands out. He's a parent so should rightly be welcomed in parents' groups - to be excluded would be a genuine form of the transphobia they're usually so keen to shout out. I doubt most people in his community have the time or inclination to give a stuff about how he lives his life.

Agree.

@TheBuffster

Am I the only one who thinks the actual pregnancy was selfish?

He'd been taking hormones that were unnatural for a woman, let alone someone trying to conceive. We don't know what effect that could have on a developing fetus.

Women give up alcohol, certain herbs, sports and hot baths to keep their baby safe and sadly still sometimes they're born with a disability or birth defect.
He gambled with his baby and that makes my blood boil.

My son has cp so I know what it feels like to fail your baby. That someone would be so wreckless, even changing their sex in the NHS records to male, this presumably risking missing prenatal care really makes me angry.

Lots of women with medical conditions have to make difficult choices around pregnancy particularly whether to carry on taking medication that isn't tested on pregnant women. Not knowing anything about the specifics of the medication that Freddy took, I would put Freddy in that category.

I don't expect Freddy to be a shining beacon of virtue - goodness knows many women aren't. I just strongly disagree with pretty much all the arguments he makes about legal issues and identity.