CISGENDER

• The SC said it was unconstitutional to distinguish between married & unmarried women while allowing abortion when the foetus is between 20-24 weeks.
• Going a step further, the court said the term 'woman' in the judgement included persons other than cisgender women.
• Before it is embarked upon a discussion on the law & its application, it must be mentioned that the term 'woman' in the judgement as including persons other than cis-gender women who may require access to safe medical termination of their pregnancies.

• The term cisgender is used to define people whose gender identity & expression match their identity to them at birth.
• When a child is born, it is assigned a gender identity based on its physical characteristics.
• Many believe that gender is a social construct and growing up, the child may or may not confirm the birth identity.
• For transgender people, their sense of gender identity does not match the one assigned to them at birth.
• A cisgender is a person who was assigned female at birth & continues to identify as a woman.
• The Latin prefix"Cis" literally means "on the same side of", while "trans" means on the other side.
• Trans as a prefix is used commonly though cis is rare in popular usage.

• If there are transgender people, there should be a word for those who are not.
• Giving a label to only one section of the population, especially when that is in the minority, implies that the others are default, normal and only that section needs to be labelled.
• Having distinct words for transgender & cisgender people denotes that both are equally valid, neutral experiences, with no aberration.
• There are many other terms like genderqueer, gender fluid, and gender variant.

• Some people who work on trans rights, feel terms like cisgender belong in the realm of gender theory alone & their usage can be counterproductive.
• People are less likely to grasp a message if they have to look up the individual words that make up the message.
• Others feel cisgender as a counter to transgender is restrictive-reinforcing a binary of genders that many choose to reject & does not have space for intersex people.

• Before India's Supreme Court used cisgender in the context of reproductive rights, the US government had replaced the word 'mothers' with birthing people, on bringing down maternal mortality.
• Those who advocate the use of birthing people say it is not just women who give birth.
• Transmen- a person assigned the female gender at birth but who identifies as a man.
• Genderqueer People- a person who identifies as neither man nor woman but can give birth.

• Two prominent cases of men who gave birth are USA's Thomas Beatie & UK's Freddy McConnell.
• Beatie, assigned female at birth but legally male, had while transitioning, kept his female reproductive organs because his wife was infertile.
• McConnell lost publicised legal battle to be officially recognised as the father and not the mother, of the baby he gave birth to.
• McConnell argued that he was a man by the time the child was born.