An Oregon man has publicly announced that he is five months pregnant with a healthy baby girl. So all of those hypothetical “If men could get pregnant….”
statements may get practically tested after all--although somehow I don’t think abortion is going to become
a sacrament or maternity leave is going to last for two years for the sake of
Thomas Beattie, a transgender man who had to go through nearly ten doctors before he
found one who was willing to handle his highly unusual case.
I must admit that when I first heard about Beattie’s pregnancy claims on ABC, I feared for the reputations of transgender people
everywhere: a man gets gender reassignment surgery, then gets
artificially inseminated and broadcasts it on the Internet? Plus, according to ABC, a few of Beattie's neighbors were convinced the whole thing was a hoax. “I saw him the other day, and
he didn’t look pregnant,” one said. (As I later learned, my concern about Beattie's outspokenness was shared by some in the trans community.)
But after reading Beattie’s moving first-person account published in The Advocate, I had a very different take. ABC failed to mention
that Beattie’s wife is unable to carry a child, making their decision to have Beattie be the biological mother understandable. Furthermore, Beattie explains the
logistics of his situation in such a way that it's clear this will be a very wanted baby. He has
always identified as a man, and years ago underwent chest reconstruction surgery
and began taking testosterone to appear outwardly as one. But he kept his
female reproductive organs, so in order to become pregnant, all he needed to do
was stop his testosterone injections. Not that he wanted to start getting PMS and cramps again, but hey, we all make sacrifices for our offspring.
