The Gender-Neutral Attack on Motherhood

There is a biological basis to bearing children that no amount of trans activism can erase.

I was genuinely shocked by the news that Freddy McConnell, a transgender man who retained his female reproductive organs and gave birth to a child, lost his High Court case to be registered as the child’s ‘father’ or ‘parent’.

I wasn’t shocked because I disagree with the court’s judgement that the status of ‘mother’ is correctly afforded to a person who carries and gives birth to a baby. And I wasn’t shocked because I support the growing trend towards detaching female biology from pregnancy and motherhood. No, I was shocked precisely because the High Court did not grant McConnell’s wish. And because it did so at a time when Western societies have become so confused over gender and sex that they have usually been more than willing to call into question the biological distinction between men and women.

Even trans activists have been surprised at the ease with which conventional distinctions between men and women have been eroded. Noting the acceptance of gender-neutral pronouns, the emergence of ‘all-gender’ restrooms, and the growing number of US states recognising a third-gender category, one American professor of law, sympathetic to trans activism, noted the ‘stunning speed [with which] non-binary gender identities have gone from obscurity to prominence in American public life’ (1). Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $10.00 (as of 08:25 UTC - Details)

The UK and parts of northern Europe have also been hospitable to a dramatic revision of gender identities. It is now sufficient for a biological male to self-identify as a female in order to gain access to women’s toilets, refuges or prisons. Even hitherto girls-only institutions, such as the Guides, are now open to boys who self-identify as females.

Until now, most of the debate around the rise of transgender culture has focused on the rights and wrongs of allowing people to self-identify as male or female in line with their personal inclinations. However, as the McConnell case indicates, the trend towards gender-neutrality promises something more radical still: the abolition of the distinction between the biological category of man and woman. While, in this instance, the law adhered to the distinction, formulated during the case by Ben Jaffey QC, between a ‘person who gives birth and a person who does not’, it is only a matter of time, if present trends continue, before this distinction is eroded.

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