Do transgender women have a right to gestation?
by Michael Cook | 8 Sep 2018 | 2 comments
Successful womb transplants have given birth to the notion that transgender women or even cisgender men could bear children. In the latest edition of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Amel Alghrani, of the University of Liverpool (UK) strongly defends the idea that they have a right to gestate. “Transgender, non-binary, and other gender plural individuals have the same procreative liberties as cisgender individuals,” she contends. Denying them this right would be tantamount to cissexism.
This would be true even if the person in question already had children as a cisgender man. It is the lived experience that matters:
the question here is not necessarily one of having children; transgender women may already be parents and have had children both prior to gender affirming surgery transitioning and post, depending on what type of surgeries and hormonal therapies they have chosen. The question is one of securing an experience imagined as important to one's (gender) identity and hoped-for parental bonds.
Denying this right could possibly be a tragedy for the person involved, Alghrani says:
Whilst it is true that one may not traditionally regard a cisgender male not being able to get pregnant as a human tragedy, this may be because it is not yet possible and people do not have sympathy because someone cannot do the impossible. For instance, I may not sympathize with someone unable to teleport. But in a world where cisgender men can get pregnant/people can teleport, we may think differently and see it as a tragedy. Furthermore, rights are not based on whether something is perceived as a tragedy or not.
She concludes that (assuming a Millean view of liberty) no good arguments exist to confound a right to gestation for transgender women, non-binaries and so on:
...those who would exercise procreative liberty so that they can gestate a child do not have to show what good it would do, rather those who would curtail freedom have to show not simply that it is unpopular, or undesirable, but that it is seriously harmful to others, or to society and that these harms are real and present, not future and speculative.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
John Robertson was an American scholar in law and bioethics who died last year. He is best known for making a strong case for “procreative liberty”, whether procreation takes place naturally or with the help of technology. As a tribute to his influence, the current issue of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences contains several articles about this theory.
Robertson’s theme was that reproductive choices which do not harm the interests of others should not be subject to regulation or prohibition. In his best-known book, Children of Choice, published in 1996, he discussed abortion, IVF, surrogacy and pre-natal genetic modification. But time has moved on. The principle of effectively unconstrained “procreative liberty” is being used to justify other developments, some of which are discussed in the Journal, including unisex gestation.
What I found interesting was that Robertson, in a paper written not long before his death, agreed that a male pregnancy (after a womb transplant) could be ethically justified, but only if it were necessary for genetic reproduction. Even he wanted to draw a line somewhere.
However, the author of one of tribute essays questions this restriction. Enjoying the experience of gestation is reason enough, she says. (See below). I suppose that this raises the question of whether it is possible to draw any lines, anywhere, once we agree that reproductive rights should not be limited.
Robertson’s theme was that reproductive choices which do not harm the interests of others should not be subject to regulation or prohibition. In his best-known book, Children of Choice, published in 1996, he discussed abortion, IVF, surrogacy and pre-natal genetic modification. But time has moved on. The principle of effectively unconstrained “procreative liberty” is being used to justify other developments, some of which are discussed in the Journal, including unisex gestation.
What I found interesting was that Robertson, in a paper written not long before his death, agreed that a male pregnancy (after a womb transplant) could be ethically justified, but only if it were necessary for genetic reproduction. Even he wanted to draw a line somewhere.
However, the author of one of tribute essays questions this restriction. Enjoying the experience of gestation is reason enough, she says. (See below). I suppose that this raises the question of whether it is possible to draw any lines, anywhere, once we agree that reproductive rights should not be limited.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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