Brave new world of Britain’s first motherless child
Freddy was born female and is now a man – but kept his womb to have a baby. And, in a legal first that could have profound ethical consequences, he’s fighting to be named as Dad, NOT Mum, on the birth certificate...
‘A genetic link is something I needed to have’
FREddY McCOnnELL’S firstborn looks the spit of him. Visitors to the family home get confused about a photo on the wall which shows a child with fair hair, blue eyes and heavy eyelids. Father, or child? It’s actually Freddy when he was that age. no question about parentage here.
Or is there? Because this is by no means a straightforward parent and child situation, although the confusion is more to do with gender than genetics.
For Freddy was not only in the room when his baby was born, he also gave birth to his child.
By law, although Freddy was born female, he is (and was on the day his child was born) a man. Ten days after he legally became a man, he accessed sperm from a donor and — because he had decided to keep his womb — was in the extraordinary (although not unique, as we will discover) position of being a pregnant man.
But did this make him ‘ daddy’ or ‘Mummy’ when his much-wanted baby was placed in his arms? Well, this conundrum has now become a matter for the High Court.
When Freddy, a proud campaigner on transgender issues, went to register his child’s birth, he requested that he be named as the ‘ father’ on the legal document, rather than the ‘mother’. The General Register Office, going by the rules established in 1836, refused, pointing out that, legally, a child has to have a mother, at least on the document that confirms their existence.
Freddy’s objections have led to a High Court battle against the Government, with his lawyer arguing that it is a breach of Freddy’s human rights to force him to be recognised as the baby’s mother.
Some will find it baffling that a trans man can reject his previous womanhood to such a degree, while still taking advantage of its most defining aspect: a womb.
To be legally recognised as having changed gender, however, it is not a requirement for sex reassignment surgery to have taken place, although the person must have been living in their ‘new’ gender for two years, and be able to convince the Gender Recognition Panel of their case.
Others will argue that the law needs to keep up with a fastchanging world, a world in which men can — as the very existence of this baby shows — give birth. Whatever, the ramifications of this case are huge. If Freddy’s case is successful, his child will be the first in Britain to, in the eyes of the law, have no mother.
It’s only now that we can report that Freddy — who lives in an English seaside town and is in his early 30s — is the man at the centre of this hugely important case.
He had previously applied to the court to have his identity — and that of his child — kept out of the public domain.
But after it was revealed that Freddy had actually made a film about his path to parenthood — inviting the cameras into the delivery suite where he had his baby in a birthing pool, no less — a judge lifted the reporting restrictions applying to Freddy himself, explaining that he could not expect to remain anonymous while simultaneously inviting media scrutiny.
Lawyers for the media companies who challenged the anonymity ruling, including the Mail, said it was a case of him trying to have his cake, and eat it. Of course, the whole situation where a trans man can access fertility treatment to conceive could also be described as wanting the best of both worlds.
Indeed, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the High Court, has raised concerns about transgender men’s ability to access fertility treatment in the UK, calling on the Government to review the current legislation.
Freddy McConnell has a very different message, however. He has said in a previous interview that he hopes his story will prove to other trans men that carrying their own child is indeed possible.
Talking to his own newspaper — he is a multimedia journalist at The Guardian — he recalled signing the consent form to start taking testosterone (a key part of the transition process), and being told that the treatment would render him infertile.
‘It was like saying: “Yes, I accept I will never have my own children,”’ he said, ‘which seems really unfair now I know the truth. Trans men are still not being given the right
information about their options, including how to carry their own children safely. We’re told we can’t, and it’s assumed that we don’t want to.’
Actually, it is entirely possible for a trans man to get pregnant. While it is rare, it is not unheard of. There are no definitive figures about how many transgender men have given birth, but in the UK there have been a few high- profile cases, including Hayden Cross, who in 2017 was hailed ‘ Britain’s first pregnant man’.
This accolade was quickly withdrawn when news emerged that another trans man, Scott Parker, had given birth a few months earlier. Then there was Jason Barker, who gave birth to his son eight years ago.
Where these cases differ, though, is that none of these men has attempted to have the word ‘mother’ erased from the legal documentation.
So what do we know about Freddy McConnell? His film Seahorse (so named because with seahorses, it is the male who carries the young) tells his extraordinary story. The documentary, filmed over three years, was shown at the Tribeca film festival in New York in the spring and will go on general release later this year.
Promotional clips do suggest some may find it a difficult story to get their head round.
An image of Freddy with his feet in hospital stirrups is certainly striking. So, too, are the ones of his belly ballooning as the baby inside him grows.
He has previously explained that his pregnancy did not attract the attention it might have done, because his bump was actually quite small — small enough to pass off as a beer belly, perhaps.
‘I carried quite small the whole way through,’ he said. ‘ My mum noticed that men’s bellies sit very similarly to the way pregnant bellies sit. So no one’s going to think you’re pregnant.
‘People read gender in less than a second — so if I had a beard, it would not matter what the rest of my body looked like, they would read me as male.’ Of course, Freddy has always read himself as male. Although born a girl ( he has consistently declined to reveal his old name, and has spoken of it feeling weird to be ‘confronted’ by it), he always felt like a boy inside, although he was bullied for being ‘too boyish’.
He was a bright and opinionated child, according to school reports. Talking about experiencing gender dysphoria as a child, he now says: ‘I once heard it described as a cosmic toothache, which is quite apt. And I’d felt it since the age of three or four.
‘I talked about it very rarely, but quickly realised as a young child it wasn’t an OK thing to talk about. People don’t like it when little kids use terms like “sex change”, and they tell you to shut up.’
Freddy’s mum, Esme ( who appears in the documentary and is hugely supportive) thought that he would ‘ grow out of it, and I believed her’.
After school, he went to Edinburgh University, studying Arabic, and worked abroad teaching, but he found his 20s incredibly difficult because of the growing certainty he should have been born male.
By the age of 25, he was on the route to gender reassignment. He started taking testosterone, then had surgery to remove his breasts. He considered a hysterectomy, but did not go through with it.
Interestingly, he had always wanted to be a parent, and had considered becoming pregnant before transitioning. Then he decided that would be irresponsible. ‘I needed to figure out exactly who I was before I had a kid,’ he explained.
He was told that he could freeze his eggs, with a view to surrogacy further down the line, but ruled this out. Then, on hearing that trans men in the U.S. had given birth themselves, this seemed like a preferable option.
‘I went back and forth for ages. But for me, having that genetic link is something I felt I needed to have. It took me so long to feel OK about wanting kids, because there is a stigma attached to it.
‘ It took me a long time to separate identity from biology. I’m just using my hardware to do a thing. It’s pragmatic.’
There was discomfort even within his own family about his chosen route to parenthood. His father, a shop owner, was not immediately supportive, the film reveals.
Initially, he could not understand why Freddy had fought so hard to become a man, yet was now doing the very thing that most defines womanhood — having a baby.
Their relationship improved once the baby arrived, however.
There have been other relationship hiccups, too. At the start of the film, Freddy is living with CJ, who is non-binary and uses the gender- neutral pronoun ‘ they’ (though Freddy explains ‘my partner and I both have ovaries’).
The baby Freddy is planning is going to complete their family, and they hunt the sperm donor sites together. Then, halfway through the film, things have changed, and CJ will no longer be involved.
From here on, single-parenthood beckons. The physical difficulties cannot be underestimated.
To get pregnant, Freddy has to stop taking testosterone in order to conceive. His body goes into a gender limbo. He starts having periods again, which appals him (‘I don’t like the idea that I’ve got tampons in my bag,’ he says).
His facial hair gets whispier, and his hips broaden. There are tears, high emotion, clearly his hormones are playing havoc. ‘I feel like a f***ing alien,’ he complains at one of his low points.
Against all the odds, Freddy falls pregnant. While the pregnancy isn’t easy, the birth is joyous.
‘There is a strong case to be made for it being the peak human experience, if it goes well,’ he has said since, one of the few men in the world to be able to say such a thing with authority.
The cameras are there as he gives birth, which was an odd experience, but now he is ‘glad it was captured’, not least because one day his child, the one at the heart of this huge debate, will have questions about their birth.
‘I look forward to sharing everything,’ he has said. ‘I’m going to be totally open at every stage — whatever is age-appropriate.’
What a complicated thing to have to explain to a child, though.
The High Court ruling will determine whether Freddy is allowed to erase Mummy from the equation completely. Whatever the outcome, however, it’s clear this muchwanted child will be raised surrounded by love.
‘I look forward to sharing everything’