Trans and non-binary categories added to forms for reporting death of a child

Trans and non-binary gender categories have been added to official documents needed to report the death of a child in the UK.

The update, published on the government website on Monday (14 October) adds the categories of “male (including trans male)”, “female (including trans female)” and “non-binary”, alongside the existing choices. The forms are used to help child death overview panels assess the cause of a child’s death as part of a review process.

Death certificates which recognise a young trans person when they do not have a gender recognition certificate (GRC), came to the forefront of British politics after the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey last year.

Following Ghey’s death, a petition was launched calling for changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and specifically urged the government to update the legislation so the “family of a dead trans person with no GRC can apply for [a] re-issued death certificate via statutory declaration” and where “a trans individual has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, can acquire a GRC via statutory declaration”. 

Under current UK law, only people aged 18 and older are able to apply for, and obtain, a GRC, which allows a trans person’s gender to be recorded on birth, death and marriage certificates. Ghey was too young at the time of her death to obtain a certificate.

However, research by the Trans Safety Network shows a GRC is not needed for a transgender person’s true gender to be registered on a death certificate because the only document legally required is a medical certificate of death. Trans legal researcher and journalist Jess O’Thomson has previously said that while this would bring “relief” to transgender men and women, it is not “satisfactory” because it does not stop “malicious cis family members intentionally omitting our transness”.

Torran Nathaniel Turner, who launched the petition, told PinkNews at the time: “Being recognised for who you are in death should be a right”, and the family and friends of dead trans people should not “have to fight with someone” for that. 

Earlier this year, Labour MP Charlotte Nichols, who represents the Warrington North constituency where Ghey was killed, also called for the GRA to be reformed. A change would “allow transgender people who are deceased to be legally remembered by the gender they lived by”, she said. 

Noting that the Conservative government at the time said it had no plans to change the GRA, Nichols said it was “something I continue to have raised with me by my constituents and will continue to raise with the government so that this can be an option available to bereaved families, should they so wish”.

However, current shadow women and equalities minister Mims Davies said: ‘It is a deep insensitivity for families to be asked… if their late child was trans or non-binary in order to tick the boxes for NHS diversity officials.”

Research has previously suggested that more than half of trans and non-binary people were misgendered in death between 2011 and 2021.

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