Freddy McConnell and the mother of fights

Coronavirus has closed schools, grounded planes and even delayed the start of the cricket county championship, but it has not shut down the transgender debate. This often toxic and divisive issue has proved to be one of the hardiest items in the news agenda in recent years. And even a pandemic has done little to limit the exposure.

Birth certificates are the latest topic to provoke fury. But now there is a difference. While the discussion up to now has broadly surrounded the documents of transgender people, the Court of Appeal has just upheld a ruling about the documents of their children.

The case had been brought by Freddy McConnell, a transgender man, who wanted to change the way that he was described on his son’s birth certificate: a child he gave birth to in 2018. Last September, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the High Court’s family division, ruled that people who give birth are legally mothers.