1The place that history has assigned to women – maternity and home care – shows how sexual identity can not be a physiological and genetic issue alone, but relies heavily on a social perception and a cultural dimension.

2The difference between the situation of women and that experienced by people whose psychic identity does not correspond to biological sex is that the former seem to want to escape a gender identity that others – society – have built for them when the second question the physiological and genetic identity that public order imposes on them. Beyond appearances, both aspire however to the same goal: to uphold the “global” identity that is theirs by obtaining that their freedom of decision takes precedence over any interference.

3This does not mean that society and the State have no role to play but that their intervention implies in the first place, in a democratic society, to defend the rights of each individual, both through respect for the laws and the education of all to the respect of others and to an awareness of the sterotypes that nourish injustice, stigmatization, discrimination, violence.

4This does not mean also that in the field of assisted procreation and the use of other medical techniques, such as genetics, the State, which must promote equal access to the health service, can not legislate on the medical aspects and also n the exercise of individual freedom.

5But it must do so by taking into account a double balance: that of the diversity of the individual interests concerned and that of the relationship between these interests and the general interest.

6It is in this choice that, of course, lies the difficulty of any public policy. And it is precisely the interest of the few studies presented in this issue to give us the opportunity to analyze from concrete situations, geographically and humanly diverse, how to build such policies. In the absence of being the actors, we become attentive spectators and perhaps it will be born from these known experiences a reflection useful to our own practices.