Dunne Peter
Ussher Fellow, Trinity College Dublin.
Med Law Rev. 2017 Nov 1;25(4):554-581. doi: 10.1093/medlaw/fwx028.
The possibility of individuals procreating post-transition has long stalked debates on transgender rights. In 1972, Sweden became the first European jurisdiction to formally acknowledge preferred gender. Under the original Swedish law, applicants for gender recognition were explicitly required to prove an incapacity to reproduce-either through natural infertility or through a positive act of sterilisation. Across the Council of Europe, 20 countries continue to enforce a sterilisation requirement. When considering reforms to their current gender recognition rules as recently as 2015, the Polish executive and the Finnish legislature both rejected proposals to remove mandatory infertility provisions. This article critiques the rationales for transgender sterilisation in Europe. It places transgender reproduction, and non-traditional procreation, in the wider context of European equality and family law. Adopting a highly inter-disciplinary framework, the article explores legal, social, medical, and moral arguments in favour of sterilisation, and exposes the weak intellectual and evidential basis for the current national laws. The article ultimately proposes a new departure for Europe's attitude towards transgender parenting, and argues that sterilisation should not be a pre-condition for legal recognition.
变性后个人生育的可能性长期以来一直困扰着关于跨性别者权利的辩论。1972年，瑞典成为欧洲第一个正式承认首选性别的司法管辖区。根据瑞典的原始法律，申请性别认定的人被明确要求证明自己无生育能力——要么是自然不孕，要么是通过积极的绝育行为。在整个欧洲委员会，有20个国家继续实施绝育要求。就在2015年，波兰行政部门和芬兰立法机构在考虑对其现行性别认定规则进行改革时，都否决了取消强制不孕条款的提议。本文批判了欧洲跨性别者绝育的理由。它将跨性别者生育以及非传统生育置于欧洲平等法和家庭法的更广泛背景下。本文采用高度跨学科的框架，探讨了支持绝育的法律、社会、医学和道德论据，并揭示了现行国家法律薄弱的理论和证据基础。本文最终为欧洲对待跨性别者育儿的态度提出了新的方向，并认为绝育不应成为法律认可的先决条件。
