High Court rules against transgender man who gave birth in his battle to be registered as father

Yesterday the High Court ruled that a transgender man who gave birth with the help of fertility treatment could not be registered as the child's father, rather than its mother, on the birth certificate.

The case, the background to which has been covered previously on this site, establishes the first legal definition of the term "mother" in English common law.

In his judgment in R (on the application of TT) v The Registrar General for England and Wales and Others, the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, ruled that being a "mother" referred to being pregnant and giving birth, regardless of whether that person, in law, was a man or a woman. He went on to state that:

“The principal conclusion at the centre of this extensive judgment can be shortly stated. It is that there is a material difference between a person’s gender and their status as a parent. Being a ‘mother’, whilst hitherto always associated with being female, is the status afforded to a person who undergoes the physical and biological process of carrying a pregnancy and giving birth. It is now medically and legally possible for an individual, whose gender is recognised in law as male, to become pregnant and give birth to their child. Whilst that person’s gender is ‘male’, their parental status, which derives from their biological role in giving birth, is that of ‘mother’.”