Dr Suki Finn examines the political, philosophical, and legal aspects of transgender pregnancy and parenting.
What is a family – a mother, a father, and two children? This has been the traditional idea of a ‘nuclear family’ in some parts of the world, but it no longer captures the diversity of families as they exist today. And what do we mean by a mother and a father anyway?
In a nuclear family, the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are based on normative, reproductive roles, which defines the person who gives birth as the mother and the person who provides sperm as the father. But what about people who become parents in other ways? And where does this leave individuals who have transitioned from the gender they were assigned at birth, whether before or after becoming parents?
Dr Suki Finn, Lecturer in Philosophy and Gender Studies, is researching the social and political implications of transgender pregnancy and parenthood, and the legal and medical frameworks that shape these experiences. She is exploring how some trans and nonbinary people want to be recognised as parents according to their gender, rather than according to their biological contribution in the reproductive process and their biological sex assigned at birth.
Dr Finn’s paper challenges the conventional views that conflate pregnancy, birthing, and motherhood. There are multiple ways to become a parent. There are those who have given birth but are not mothers, for example, because of miscarriage, surrogacy, transmasculine and nonbinary pregnancies, and there are mothers who have not given birth, for example via adoption or being a trans mother. There are even cis women who gave birth but reject the gendered aspects of motherhood and consider themselves parents instead.
Her recent article highlights an inconsistency in English and Welsh law, based upon the UK Supreme Court’s conflation of women as people with the capacity for pregnancy:
“There is an incongruency between the legal use of ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ and the ways that those terms are used in other domains of life. To rule as the Court has done is out of touch with the lived realities that the law is intended to legislate about, carving out gendered and parental groupings in inappropriate, inaccurate and offensive ways. Far from providing clarity, those trans men with Gender Recognition Certificates are legally considered to be men under the Gender Recognition Act, but women according to the Equality Act, a tension centred explicitly around their capacity for pregnancy. The more appropriate legal reform would be to understand pregnancy inclusively of all genders, as opposed to regressively understanding gender exclusively by the ability to become pregnant.”
Dr Finn argues that the practice of defining and regulating parenthood using biological sex assigned at birth is outdated. In their recent paper, Dr Finn and co-author Simon Indesteege further argue that it means inadequate safeguards for trans parents and their families, and raises privacy issues in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life.
As they point out, there are some countries, such as Sweden, Iceland and Denmark, that have already adopted laws to recognise trans parents according to their self-determined gender, and there are many other promising alternatives for moving towards reproductive justice for everyone. In the summary of their paper, they say:
“International human rights bodies have also signalled the need for reform. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the United Nations Human Rights Council have called on states to recognize the gender identity of transgender parents on birth certificates. The Yogyakarta Principles, which outline human rights protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, explicitly support this shift. Recognising trans parenthood is not just about legal accuracy reflecting social reality, it’s about reproductive justice and the right of all families to be treated with dignity. By moving beyond (bio)logic, we can ensure that legal systems serve, rather than marginalise, those they are meant to protect.”
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You can find out more about Dr Suki Finn's research here:
Trans/forming Pregnancy: Exploring new perspectives on gender and pregnant embodiment: research project awarded the Reid Research Fund, co-authored with Caterina Nirta and Laura Sjoberg
Trans/forming Pregnancy: journal article co-authored with Caterina Nirta and Laura Sjoberg
De-gendering and De-sexing Motherhood: journal article
(Bio)logical phallacies in legal cases of trans families: journal article co-authored with Simon Indesteege
Trans/parent pregnancy: The (in)visibility of gender diversity in reproductive healthcare: book chapter co-authored with Caterina Nirta
The way human life is created is changing: iai news article
