Anti-gay Tory MP takes aim at trans people who want to have kids using NHS fertility treatment
A Tory MP has hit out at trans men who freeze their eggs using NHS fertility treatment to become parents after they transition.
Peter Bone, the Tory MP for Wellingborough, hit out at the service being provided on the NHS.
He told the Telegraph: “I am not sure why the taxpayer should be funding this. I just sometimes ask if the NHS is getting its priorities right.”
But the NHS has defended the right of trans people to preserve their fertility before they medically transition.
Dr Hames Barrett, who leads the NHS Gender Identity Clinic in West London said: “As a matter of principle, anybody who loses their fertility as a result of standard NHS treatment should be able to preserve their fertility.”
According to the Telegraph, three trans men are “on the brink” of becoming parents using the fertility treatment.
Mostly the men freeze their eggs at NHS clinics before they undergo hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery.
This means they can be implanted into a surrogate mother later.
In rare cases the men become pregnant later and give birth if they do not undergo gender reassignment surgery.
But Dr Barrett said some still find it hard to access fertility treatment, and some NHS authorities had refused outright to provide the service.
During the same-sex marriage debates for legislation in England and Wales, Peter Bone consistently attacked the rights of gay, bi and lesbian couples to marry.
Speaking to PinkNews.co.uk in November 2013, Mr Bone said this had been a reference to the political implementation of the policy rather than the actual principle of marriage rights for same-sex couples.
In 1995, the Daily Mirror famously dubbed Mr Bone, who opposed minimum wage regulations brought in by Labour, the “meanest boss” in the country for paying a 17-year-old 87p an hour.
The MP said he would not have been able to hire her had a minimum wage law been in place and predicted at the time that such a rule would leave “hundreds of thousands” of people “condemned to the dole queue”.
Mr Bone voted against the Equality Act in 2007.
