header image

Transgendered man claims he’s pregnant with a girl

Posted by: biologyblog | March 26, 2008 | 7 Comments |



An American man who used to be a woman says he’s more than five-months pregnant with a girl. Thomas Beatie, a transgendered man who lives in Oregon, tells his story in a first-person account published in The Advocate — a magazine for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. In the story, Beatie reveals that he is legally male and married to a woman named Nancy. “Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights,” he says in the article. Beatie said he stopped taking his testosterone injections to get pregnant. He claims to have already gone through an ectopic pregnancy. Beatie, who got pregnant through home insemination, said it was a “life-threatening event” that resulted in the loss of all the embryos (he had triplets) and his right fallopian tube. Now, his second time getting pregnant, Beatie says the pregnancy is free of complications. “How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” he says in the article. “Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am.”

http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid52664.asp 

under: Uncategorized

Responses - Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)

I was intrigued by this article and decided to read it myself. I had never heard of a trans gender “male” getting pregnant and I wanted to find out his motives behind the situation. His ultimate reasoning for doing it was because his wife could not get pregnant for medical reasons. It took a lot of effort on his part after all of his testosterone injections and surgeries to become a legal male. He had a lot of preparation involved in having this child. I would be interested to find out more about the actual birthing and if there would be any complications after the birth once he started using his testosterone again. Overall this was a pretty interesting article.

My psych professor commented on this article in class and when i first heard the tittle of the article I was shocked especially since before anything my professor tried to trick us into believing that a man became pregnant. However I think that the reasoning behind his pregnancy are valid because parenthood to me is the best thing in the world and since his wife could not get pregnant why could he not carry out the baby for her (after all he was biologically a woman). His decision to become pregnant and stop taking testostorone injections for the sake of the baby does not downgrade his decision of becoming a male, it just shows the couples grand desire to be parents and after he gives birth he can strictly play the role of father to the baby girl.

I feel like this story has positvely blown up within the past few weeks (and rightfully so). Even Oprah got her chance to cover the story. Now me being the psych major has to question what is going to happen next. I mean if you think about it, giving birth is more than just a physical change, its a mental and emotional change as well. There are more cases than I can count, of women who say they are going to be surrogate mothers for someone and then end up keeping the child due to the emotional attachment a mother feels after carrying a child for 9 months. Now this case is a little different because he will in turn still have the baby as his own child, but it will be interesting to see how he responds mentally after the birth. I can imagine that the mental switch from mother to father is going to be a very difficult one. It will be interesting to see how the return to the testosterone injections will help (or hinder) that switch. Another thing I worry about is the wife’s eventual reaction to the birth of the child. It will be interesting to see how she reacts. Now maybe I’m reading way too far into this, and everything will be fine, but this is definately a story I’m going to have to keep up on!

I found this VERY famous story to be fascinating in so many ways. When I first learned about this story on a preview on Oprah, at first I was very confused. I thought to myself “it is impossible for a man to give birth!” Yet as I continued to learn more about it I foud that the man was really a woman with her female genitals still in place.

I do not want to say that I do not agree with this action but I can not say that I believe it is a natural, normal action. My first thoughts were about the unborn child. Many American families have homosexual parents with adopted children yet I look at this story to be a little bit different. I am concerned that this child will be mentally confused about how he/she was born, because in this couples eyes this child will be calling them mom and dad yet the child will know that dad gave birth to them. That can confuse a child dramatically especially socially.

This is a very interesting story to say the least. My intial thoughts when hearing this story were obviously disbelief (then I didn’t know the full story, being transgender and such). It’s fascinating but I think it brings up some issues too. I wonder if any complications could happen with the baby’s health due to the testosterone in his body. Also, it will be interesting to see how the child is raised and once it gets older, how they will react to the fact that their father gave birth to them.
Also, I’m sure it was a huge decision for this man to make and I’m sure his wife appreciates it greatly.

Reading this article made me cringe in my seat. I think it is somewhat disturbing yet interesting for a “man” to be pregnant. The thought of it is really bizarre. However, I find it intriguing how Beatie displays such courage in a harsh world. Many people completely loathe the fact that a transgender person is giving birth. In my other classes we have touched on this subject and many students speculate that the baby will suffer a deformity and be a freak of nature because the mother is a “man” and the
testosterone will have an affect on the baby’s development.

I believe and hope that the baby will turn out healthy. However, I feel sympathetic towards the baby because it has to grow up in a cruel world where bullying and violence plainly exists, and there is no doubt that the baby is going to have to go through turmoil because it has a ‘man’ as a mother.

I first read about this in a magazine a couple days ago. The article only stated that he had been pregnant before, it did not go into detail about having triplets. – Even though he is legally a male, he never had an operation to remove the female reproductive organs. Many different people have been talking about this story and how they are disguisted by the thought of a man being pregnant. I do not find this disguisting or weird at all. Even though he is a male, he still has female reproduction organs. So basically, its like a woman being pregnant who just looks like a guy. I don’t see the big deal about that. But then again I have very different views than the “normal” or “average” American.

Leave a response - Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)

Your response:

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-Spam Image

Categories