By Yo-Ling Chen
The Taiwan Women’s Link (TWL) held a press conference this Wednesday to demand that the Assisted Reproduction Act (ARA) be amended to allow for the advancement of surrogacy and decouple the issue from surrogacy. TWL released a complaint at the press conference calling for single people and gay families to have access to assisted reproduction so that “all women who want to breed” can do so under a structure that “ensures women’s sexual independence.” While the TWL’s plea and press event helped to raise awareness of transgender rights in Taiwan, they failed to take into account the rights of trans people there.
The ARA, which was passed in 2007, already forbids heterosexual married couples who have a reproduction matter from having access to assisted reproduction. After this time, the DPP, KMT, and TPP, along with smaller parties like the New Power Party and Green Party Taiwan, are expected to pass legislation to alter the ARA. Nearly all of the major feminist, gender equity, and tongzhi NGOs, including The Garden of Hope Foundation, Awakening Foundation, Taiwan Equality Campaign, Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association, Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association, and Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy, were represented by a total of 27 organizations in the TWL’s petition last week. Despite making similar calls for allowing single women and lesbian couples to have access to assisted reproduction immediately and separating these demands from surrogacy legislation, Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) did not sign TWL’s petition.
Although there is widespread support for allowing for assisted reproduction, transgender people’s reproductive rights have generally been neglected in discussions of ARA modifications. The first non-binary organization in Taiwan and a signee of TWL’s petition, Taiwan Non-Binary Queer Sluts (TNBQS), is a rare exception. As a signee of TWL’s petitions, TNBQS made a public speech last week outlining their position on sexual freedom. The declaration calls for “absolute biological autonomy” and for gender-neutral language in discussions of ARA amendments. According to TNBQS, “using one’s own uterus to breed” is not only a problem for women and should not be related to “female” personality. There are many people who have functional vaginas who are not women, including some transgender men, transgender people, and non-binary people. These organizations may be kept in mind throughout the ARA act method because they are also influenced by laws and social attitudes toward procreation. The statement also makes note of the fact that some transgender women have fertility issues and that not all women have functional uteruses.
One of the few common instances in which transgender reproduction rights are raised is in TNBQS’s call for “all people with uteruses” to be granted biological autonomy. The only other instances where transgender gestation has been acknowledged in Taiwan are the gender-sensitive feminist group No Self ID Taiwan’s screening of Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth (2019) and multiple translated news releases from 2021. In a Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy podcast episode and a translated article by Queer Margins, which has also published another translated article on transgender mothers’ experiences with family formation (ranging from natural conception to surrogacy), assisted reproduction is mentioned. This sporadic speck in public discussion regarding trans reproductive rights has not yet been addressed by the larger discourse of ARA amendments taking place this year.
Since Taiwan also requires sterilization to change a person’s constitutional gender, physically speaking, directly listing “one woman” and “lesbian spouses” in an ARA amendment would allow transgender men and non-binary people with biological uteruses access to assisted reproduction since their lawful gender would probably be female. However, for a change would forbid trans people with functional uteruses whose lawful gender was recognized as male at birth.
As trans reproduction becomes more popular, ARA amendments may have to take into account a wider range of transgender reproduction. If the ARA were to only expand access to “individual people” and “lesbian families,” a transgender man who has already changed his lawful gender from female to male would not be able to access assisted reproduction with his infertile transgender gay partner. If both of their lawful genders are male, this restriction would also apply to a non-binary person who was born with a female birthmark and who had frozen eggs before beginning female-to-male hormone therapy. These are just two instances of transgender procreation that are likely to happen once the need for surgery is repealed. These options are still unexplored in the most recent discussions about ARA amendments, perhaps as a result of the flawed cisnormative notion that gay male couples can only have their progeny through a surrogate.
As the debate over ARA modifications gets closer to the congressional floor, public opinion is likely to rise. The current debate further entangles transgender reproductive rights in terms of social inconce
ivability and congressional oversight, which is prevalent throughout the discussion. Whether more awareness raising by trans activists will help shift the focus away from focusing on particular transgender groups and toward promoting reproductive freedom for everyone, regardless of marital status, gender, or sexual preference remains to be seen.
