Does a transgender woman retain the rights she had before transitioning?*
Born in a boy’s body, Erica believed that despite appearances, she was a girl. As a teenager her family supported her in living as a girl and in undergoing treatment, including gender reallocation surgery, aimed at facilitating her life as the woman she believed herself to be. However, before the surgical part of the transitioning process took place, Erica had a sperm sample frozen, so that, in time, she could enlist a surrogate to allow her to become the mother of a child created using her genes.
When Erica died in a traffic accident, the authorities who were storing the sperm she had frozen, decided to destroy it. As a result, a legal dispute ensued between them and her parents who had hoped, with the help of a surrogate, to honour Erica’s wish to be a mother one day, by arranging for her child (their grandchild) to be created and born. Do Erica’s parents have the right to use the sperm frozen by the man she used to be, in this way, which presupposes that after transitioning into a woman, Erica retained all the rights that had she had possessed as William, whose life as a man, she had rejected?
* On 25th August 2020, the BBC News pages online carried a sad story that closely resembled this imagined story. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-53889359
Are rights something we have, or not, because of our gender? If we feel rights are universal and intrinsic to every person, then how could Erica lose any of her rights by transitioning? Legally, wouldn't the same inheritance rules apply regardless of her gender? I guess I feel like maybe you're seeing an extreme choice (from the outside) while Erica may be making a deeply personal choice filled with nuanced conflicting thoughts and feelings (from the inside). Especially with your last sentence, "... [rights] possessed as William, whose life as a man, she had rejected." Just because somebody "rejects" life as a man, doesn't mean rejecting everything about men, maleness, and masculinity. Wouldn't it be pretty sad if we put ourselves in boxes where we have to be the complete stereotype of one gender and reject everything related to other? Most women embrace some masculine qualities, most men who embrace some feminine qualities, and Erica embraced sperm freezing for a time. ~ Katie
It is my opinion that the company did not have the right to destroy the sperm because as this reads, they were housing the sperm and not the legal entity of the sperm. The donors next of kin should have been contacted. Whether or not the speak should be used with a surrogate is the ethical dilemma left in the parent’s hands now that the donor is deceased.
Surely this is entirely dependant on the legal situation (where I am not an expert). I believe that generally, the right to use stored gametes must be explicitly granted to a person, by the person whose gametes they are, in order for them to be used, generally at the time of storage.
If this right had been granted to the woman's parents, prior to her death, then there should be no difficulty. If it had not, then they should likely be destroyed.
So I'm not sure if this is so much an ethical question, so much as a legal one. I feel it is a straw man argument that it has anything to do with gender. It would not be different if it were a cisgender man storing sperm, or a cisgender woman storing oocytes, or a trans man storing oocytes.
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