SEX-CHANGE MEN TO GIVE BIRTH ON NHS

Three men born female ‘on brink’ of having babies... Egg-freezing funding paves way for male pregnancy

WOMEN having sex changes on the NHS are being given free fertility treatment so they can have babies after they become men.

At least three British men who were born female are ‘on the brink’ of becoming parents using IVF techniques, according to a top doctor.

And dozens more are now having their eggs frozen at NHS clinics before undergoing surgery or hormone therapy to switch sex.

The controversial treatment means that a British transgender

man could soon become a parent – all funded by the taxpayer.

In rare circumstances, the man could become pregnant and give birth, although the vast majority of cases would involve implanting an embryo into a surrogate mother, often the man’s partner.

Last night critics said cashstrapped health authorities should not be spending up to £34,000 per patient to help them change sex and have children when they are rationing basic services such as cataract operations, hip replacements and even hearing aids. Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘I am not sure why the taxpayer should be funding this. I just sometimes ask if the NHS is getting its priorities right.’

But one of Britain’s leading sex change doctors defended the practice, saying patients undergoing gender reassignment surgery had

‘They want the same as everybody else’

as much right to preserve their fertility as young people with cancer who freeze their eggs or sperm before having chemotherapy.

Dr James Barrett, of the NHS Gender Identity Clinic in West London, said three of his patients who have transitioned from women to men were close to becoming parents. He added that, in the last year, he had asked GPs to refer about 50 of his female-to-male patients to have eggs frozen, and about 100 of his male-to-female patients to have their sperm frozen.

‘As a matter of principle, anybody who loses their fertility as a result of standard NHS treatment should be able to preserve their fertility,’ he argued.

‘Why are people with cancer particularly magic and get this [NHS fertility treatment], and other people don’t? Transgender patients want to live like normal people. They want what everybody else gets as a matter of course.’

Some local NHS authorities had agreed to fund fertility treatment for his patients straight away, Dr Barrett said. Some refused while others took ‘months’ to decide. According to NHS figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, the average cost of a female to male gender reassignment to the NHS is £29,975 and £13,867 for male to female. Egg-freezing IVF could add around £2,500, plus £150 a year for storage for up to ten years.

IVF services are already stretched in the NHS, with some areas such as parts of Essex, denying such treatment to infertile couples.

One transgender candidate for the treatment is 17-year-old Riley Middlemore, born Rebecca, who wants to freeze eggs before transitioning to a man, so in the future – using donor sperm – his girlfriend would be able to become a surrogate and give birth to their child. Last night, his mother Carrie said: ‘He’s very passionate about having his own children, but he wants his girlfriend to have the children – he doesn’t want to give birth.’

In 2008, American Thomas Beatie shocked the world by giving birth to a daughter, Susan, after changing gender. Mr Beatie went on to bear

two other children using donor sperm, because his wife had undergone a hysterectomy while he had kept his womb.

But Dr Barrett said that in most cases the child would be born with a surrogate and the role of the transgender man who provided the eggs ‘would be that of father’.

But Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said the procedure risked upsetting ‘the natural order’ and said children would be ‘confused by not knowing if the parent is a father or a mother’.

He added: ‘Any child is best brought up by knowing the biological father and biological mother.’

But Dr Barrett said there was no evidence transgender people made worse parents than others, adding: ‘From adoption studies, they seem to be doing fine.’

No female to male transgender patient has yet completed this process in Britain, but Dr Barrett said: ‘There may be some who are on the brink of doing so,’ indicating there were three people in this position.

He told his transgender patients who were freezing their eggs that they had a ‘small, but not zero chance of their own DNA being in some baby in the future’ because fertility treatment was often unsuccessful. But he said egg freezing was about ‘preserving options’

Official figures show a success rate of just one baby for every 29 embryos created from frozen eggs.

About 15,000 people were referred to UK gender identity clinics last year, and since 2004, transgender people have been able to obtain a new birth certificate under their altered gender.

But whether a transgender man whose frozen eggs have been used to create a baby will be legally recognised as the child’s father, rather than their mother, remains to be seen. Last year High Court judge Mr Justice Hickinbottom ruled that ‘JK’, who had switched from male to female, must be listed as ‘father’ on the birth certificates of her two children, conceived before she started hormone therapy. JK had wanted to be listed simply as ‘parent’ citing her human right to keep her gender change private.

‘The children will be confused by this’

SOCIETY has accepted that some of us now believe very strongly that we are in the wrong body, and that this feeling is so powerful that it is an objective medical condition and can only be dealt with through gender reassignment surgery.

Medicine, too has acknowledged this, and the National Health Service has reasonably decided that such treatment should be available to those who seek it.

It is a complicated and painful subject for those affected and their families, and it is best that outsiders accept that it is a genuine, compassionate need, whatever doubts they may harbour about it.

It is reasonable to ask how any who are not affected can possibly know how much such people suffer.

But now comes a suggestion that formerly female patients who have chosen to become male might use fertility treatment and surrogates to become mothers.

This is more difficult, mainly because these methods are costly, and the NHS, very short of money, is already rationing care that many would view as more urgent.

A leading expert in this field, Dr James Barrett, compares patients in this position to cancer sufferers who preserve eggs before undergoing chemotherapy.

Sex-change patients may reasonably regard their needs as urgent and pressing, but many would dispute that they are comparable to the often fatal and extremely rapid ravages of cancer.

Perhaps this is a case where charitable fundraising and philanthropy can step in to help. The NHS was not founded for such purposes, and if is stretched too far, it may yet snap under the strain.