The recent focus on trans inclusion in ENDA led me to bring up the issue of conception rights and marriage for trans people over at Pams House Blend. The conversation was predictable, with extremists claiming a right to attempt to conceive as whichever sex they want to, but it was also a good conversation that brought up lots of issues. I eventually came to a satisfying (to me) conclusion about how trans people, including intersexed people, would have their rights be affected by an Egg and Sperm law.
First of all, the Egg and Sperm law would have no effect or impact on how people live or as what gender they present. It would not effect laws about changing gender, or the rights of people who have changed gender, nor would it force intersexed people to live as or legally be their most viable sex. But it would limit conception rights to unmodified gametes and therefore prohibit a lab from attempting to reverse the person's genetic methylation to create opposite sex gametes for someone. Same-sex conception doesn't become a right just because a person changes their legal, public sex.
People should only have a right to conceive as the sex which they are most likely to be able to supply a viable unmodified gamete as. The Egg and Sperm law will have to clarify the words "man" and "woman" and "egg" and "sperm" by defining egg and sperm as being "the gamete of a woman" and "the gamete of a man" respectively, and then define "man" as someone who, if healthy, would be most likely to conceive by joining their unmodified gamete with a generic healthy random woman.
So when couple comes to a fertility lab to make a baby together, the lab would have to make an assessment about which sex each person would have their best shot at conceiving as with their unmodified gamete. If those turn out to be the same, then the lab would be prevented by the egg and sperm law, even if the couple is a legally married man and a woman (if the couple were legally of the same sex, they would be publicly banned and the lab would have to refuse them even before looking at their genes).
At first I was worried that this would create marriages that did not have conception rights, but realized that their loss of conception rights is private, because legally, to the public, the couple is a man and a woman and has conception rights. Only the lab would know that they were prohibited from conceiving. So their marriage would not strip conception rights from marriage like a same-sex marriage would (if we had an Egg and Sperm law), because a same-sex marriage is publicly prohibited, it is a legal public fact that a same-sex couple is prohibited.
So that is good news, trans people have nothing to fear from an Egg and Sperm law, they would still have every right they have today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)