Transsexual’s fatherhood fight backed
By Terence Shaw, Legal Correspondent
A REFUSAL of the British authorities to register a female-to-male transsexual as the father of his partner’s child, conceived through artificial insemination of donated sperm, has been found to be a breach of the European Human Rights Convention.
The European Human Rights Commission in Strasbourg voted by by 13 to five that the Registrar-General’s decision was a violation of the convention protecting family life.
The case has now been referred by the commission to the European Human Rights Court for a ruling on whether the convention has been breached by the Government because of the stance taken by the Registrar-General. He decided that only a biological man could be regarded as the father for the purpose of registering a birth.
When the couple tried to register the child in their joint names as mother and father nearly three years ago, the name of the father in the register was left blank, but the child was allowed to be given the surname of the female-to-male transsexual.
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