Natalie has written a piece for Bionews sharing our shock and concern about the recent case of FZ v MZ where the High Court found that a transgender father, whose wife conceived through donor insemination, was not his child’s legal parent because he had a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
The judgement is complex, but its net effect is that it excludes transgender fathers twofold from legal parenthood (they can neither be their child’s father nor their female legal parent), in circumstances where they would otherwise be a legal parent regardless of gender. This flies in the face of the founding purpose of both the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (to give donor-conceived children a secure legal connection with their parents) and the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (to ensure trans people are not left in ‘an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other’). The law urgently needs amendment.
Our team at NGA Law are passionate champions of diverse families, since we know that what matters to children is not the number or gender of their parents, but whether they are loved. We will take every opportunity available to us to make the law work for real families and will advocate for the trans community for law reform.
You can read the full article here.
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