Alison O'Connor: Happily, the Government is rethinking this daft decision to erase women

You cannot disappear the word ‘woman’ to accommodate what must be a handful of trans men who give birth each year

Roderic O’Gorman says bizarre motivations were ascribed to the Government. He might consider how bizarre it would be to remove the word 'woman' from maternity legislation. File picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

THERE is some good news for the Irish chapter of womankind this week. The Government is reviewing the utterly daft decision to remove the word woman from the legislation surrounding women giving birth in Ireland.

The fact this has been officially contemplated in the first place never gets any less weird. Before the Dáil broke up for the summer, proposed amendments to the Maternity Protection Act 1994 were to have been made involving the replacement of “woman” with “person”.

The official reason given for this is it would ensure that a trans man giving birth would be entitled to the benefits of that Act. A spokesman for the Department of Equality said this was the simplest way of dealing with the issue in legislation. Those amendments, he said, are now scheduled for around the second half of September. Crucially, though, the spokesman added, when asked about the disappearance of the word woman from this legislation that this issue “is being looked at”.

He did add that the proposed change may stay as it is, but there is no doubting the significance of this rethink on the official side, given that previous calls for change were adamantly resisted. We were told this was legal advice and the way things had to be. In fact, in early July, Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth of Ireland, in response to a Dail question from Denis Naughten TD, said his department has received legal advice to the effect that a transgender man who has had his gender recognised under the Gender Recognition Act 2015, and subsequently becomes pregnant, would not at present be entitled to leave under the maternity laws as they currently stand.

He said: “There is of course no proposal, nor any attempt, to more broadly ‘erase’ women from legislation. Women, quite obviously, continue to enjoy the full suite of social supports and protections around pregnancy that is enshrined in our laws and will continue to do so.

“Such a characterisation insinuates a bizarre motivation on the part of the Government, when in fact the only motivation is to ensure the fair application of the law to the very small, but real, number of individuals.”

First off, well done to Denis Naughten for asking about this plan to remove the word ‘woman’. Other national politicians say privately they would really like to speak out about this, but are afraid of the prospect of being “cancelled” by the sometimes vicious and very vocal online lobby which polices discourse about trans issues.

While Mr O’Gorman speaks of bizarre motivations being insinuated on the part of the Government, surely he might have reflected on the utter bizarreness of a State with maternity legislation that would not mention the word ‘woman’. It is of course important to be mindful and protect the “very small, but real, number of individuals” — the trans men who give birth — involved here.

But in doing so why would you not also consider half of the entire population — women?

Rights do not exist in isolation, they also compete. You cannot simply disappear the word ‘woman’ in order to accommodate what must be a handful of trans men, if even that, who give birth each year. We know that trans people are particularly vulnerable. We must do all we can to protect them — but not at the expense of women.

Honestly, it seems ridiculous to even have to make that argument; that it has come to this. The National Women’s Council of Ireland states that it has always advocated for the word ‘woman’ or ‘women’ to be retained in policy and legislation. In June, I heard a board member of Transgender Equality Network Ireland (Teni) on Newstalk saying similar. It has to be said, though, that neither organisation had been shouting this fact from the rooftops.

How has so much of officialdom been captured by this ideology? Could it simply be fear of the keyboard warriors, or as simple as dumping on women in general in order to solve an issue elsewhere? We really need to think hard about what is being done here and why.

There have been very significant related events in the UK of late.

The Tavistock review 

An independent review was highly critical of the Tavistock Clinic, the only dedicated gender identity clinic there for children and young people. 

The report by paediatrician Hilary Cass on the Tavistock Clinic cited a lack of understanding about why the type of patients the clinic was seeing was changing. File picture 

The NHS is to close the Tavistock Clinic and new regional centres are to be established.

The Tavistock, which had operated a satellite service in Ireland based at Crumlin children’s hospital, needed to be transformed, the report said. 

The current model of care was leaving young people “at considerable risk” of poor mental health and distress, and having just one clinic was not “a safe or viable long-term option”.

This review by Hilary Cass, a paediatrician, began in 2020 and earlier this year an interim report stated there was a lack of understanding about why the type of patients the clinic was seeing was changing with more female-to-male patients (previously it had been the other way around), more autistic children, as well as the prescribing by the clinic of puberty blockers.

Among a number of findings, Dr Cass also said the clinic was not keeping “routine and consistent” data on its patients and, crucially, how health staff there felt under pressure to adopt an “unquestioning affirmative approach” when dealing with the young patients.

This column has previously addressed how, as far back as 2018, the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland made a submission to the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2015. In it, Donal O’Shea, a consultant endocrinologist who has treated people with gender issues for 25 years, raised a number of issues of concern.

Last Sunday, the Sunday Independent reported that, between 2011 and 2021, 234 Irish children, two as young as five, were referred to the Tavistock for treatment. It
reported how concerns about the standard of care for those Irish children were again raised by Prof O’Shea and Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist with our National Gender Service in 2019, stating the Irish operation at Crumlin was “unsafe”, and should be immediately shut down.

Dr Moran raised fears about an ideological desire in the HSE to continue the Tavistock-type model of care. Now his view is that significant numbers of patients will regret transitioning or have other adverse outcomes because they were put on puberty blockers too quickly.

“We were coming across children who were clearly unwell and who had none of their underlying mental health problems addressed,” said Dr Moran.

“Many of them were not suitable or ready yet to be on hormone treatment.”

He believes the Cass report is a watershed moment. Hopefully, Mr O’Gorman, the Government, and the HSE take time over the summer to reflect on it and other matters transgender, recognising this moment for what it is.