@DreamEvenBigger this is the transcript of his speech:
“My Lords, first, let me say that I am more than grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True. At one point at Second Reading, he expressed a real sense of humanity, which is important here. Of course, like him, I recognise that “maternity” comes from the Latin “mater”, meaning “mother”, so it would be fairly ludicrous to exclude the possibility of “maternal” and other such words not being feminine.
Like other speakers, I have basically ditched my speech. I want to say just a few, hopefully relevant, things. In my life, there are four issues that have been really controversial and because of which I have received particularly extraordinary adverse and hostile press. The first was when I first discussed the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome with Professor Simon Wessely, who is now interested in helping the Government on mental health issues. That issue produced a storm of deeply unpleasant letters. Another is that being a Jewish member of the Labour Party who did not leave the party, that did not lead to anything other than some rather uncomfortable correspondence as well. I am proud of my Jewish heritage, as I am very proud to be British. In a way, this week we have seen a particularly good piece of common sense prevail in this country.
Noble Lords might remember that I raised the issue of bicycles on pavements. The amount of hostile stuff I received was unbelievable, including a few death threats. But perhaps the biggest single thing has been the question of transgender, which I first discussed about three years ago on the “Today” programme with John Humphrys. I had a lot of very unpleasant correspondence. I do not know who it was from. I presume it was from people who had a different sexuality, but I do not know for certain because I did not meet any of them. Many did not sign their name or give me an address, so it was impossible to know.
I was very upset to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, speak in the way she did, because we have agreed on many issues before. I have a massive respect for what she has done. I remind her that I was probably the first person, not only in this country but in Europe, to offer any in vitro fertilisation—it was free, of course—to lesbian couples. I am proud of that. It was important. I am certainly not a bigot or opposed to people’s different sexuality, and that certainly applies to transgender.
One thing I want to suggest is that, clearly, we will come back to this issue. We have forgotten something completely in this discussion that we really need to consider. It is all very well to speak about words, but they are often not being used correctly or with their proper definition. As a scientist and biologist, I recognise that there are very different views on gender, sex and sexuality, and they need to be stated very clearly.
For example, when it comes to sexuality, perhaps the greatest single biologist who has written on this and researched it endlessly is Professor Roger Short, a fellow of the Royal Society, who is now long retired. His work is really important—I dare not use the word “seminal”, but noble Lords will understand what I mean. He has shown, in various important pieces of research, that sexuality is not a single issue. We have genetic sex. Each of us has around 30 trillion cells in our body, which will be either XX if we are female or XY if we are male. That is something fundamental that develops from the moment of embryo genesis. Indeed, what I showed in my work many years ago was that, within three days of fertilisation, a male embryo’s metabolism is more active than that a female embryo. We even thought about trying to use this as a way to determine whether a woman would have a male or female baby during the in vitro fertilisation process, but the figures were not discrepant enough for that to be scientifically useful.
There is also gonadal sex. It is very clear that somebody who has a testis is at least male, while somebody who has an ovary is female. An ovotestis is exceptionally rare. It happens a few times, but invariably all those who have given birth with that kind of intersex have been female. They have all been XX and they predominantly all had an ovary.
There is germ cell sex as well, because we have cells in our bodies that are either sperm, in the case of a male, or eggs, in the case of a female. Those do not change, except in some rare situations. In reptiles, changes of temperature can affect the sex of an egg. It is true that marsupials and some weird voles, Microtus oregoni, seem to be able to dictate their sex to some extent with the environment. However, that is quite unique and does not occur in most mammals and certainly all humans, as far as we know.
Hormonal sex is also important, and it starts before birth, not simply at puberty. Testosterone starts to have an influence very early on in the womb. It is important to realise that women, too, produce the male hormone. In fact, if they do not, the chances are they will be infertile, and they certainly will not be as good at debating in the House of Lords than if they did have testosterone. Somehow, testosterone seems to create a feeling of wanting to express yourself in some way. I make that as a rather ludicrous aside, but noble Lords will understand what I mean.
Most important for me, which I tried to refer to last Monday, is the importance of brain sex, which is determined well before birth in the very early stages of development. We know that all sorts of influences on the foetus inside the womb—that unique connection with its mother—affect that baby in the very early stages of its development. If the woman has high levels of cortisol and is anxious, those babies are likely to be born with depression and problems with fearfulness. They will have more problems as they grow up with all sorts of different traits associated with that effect during pregnancy.
It is also possible that our brain sexuality might even be affected in the womb in the same sort of way. In fact, that increasingly seems likely; there is various evidence for it. In many cases, it is possible that a dying twin—very often we have two embryos in the uterus, not just one, but one does not survive—produces enough of a particular hormone of one sort or another that might affect the sexuality of the other twin. That certainly happens in many mammalian species and probably in the female human as well. These things are important because they affect the development of a child.
When we came to this issue of “chestfeeding” on Monday, I was staggered to think that it should be seen as a substitute for breastfeeding. It is not, because we know from all sorts of animal models that there is a very big difference between how you breastfeed and how you simply groom or cuddle the baby. That is something we need to consider very carefully, because at some point we will have to come back to debate what are impossibly difficult issues. As Roger Short said:
“It is a fascinating but incredibly complex subject which leads to a logical series of events”, but he also says that sometimes it is very difficult to understand. We have to recognise that.
I do not want to go on any longer, but one of the reasons why I support the Bill so heartily is that it has nothing to do with gender: it is about women, the uterus and the connection with the baby before and after birth. That is a unique, special environment, which we know from when that environment is challenged in different ways, as it was, for example, in Michael Meaney’s work in Canada, when the babies of women exposed to the desperate storm in the late 1990s were, as a result, born with poor cognition in many cases. We have to understand that there are many things we still do not yet to recognise, but it seems critical that we should recognise the need to praise maternity, support mothers and do all we can for women who are pregnant, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In conclusion, I simply thank some of my noble friends. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, has been wonderful in helping this argument through. I am very grateful, of course, to my noble friend Lord Hunt. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who started this with her amendment, was hugely important in getting all of us to think about it. In spite of what has been said, I think that the standard of debate on Monday was exceptionally high. The result is a credit to the House of Lords. Once again, I thank the Minister for being so flexible and helpful in his discussions with us to get this kind of result.
As regards the amendment, which I support, I am very happy to go along with what has been said already by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. From my point of view, if there is no vote I certainly will not press one.”