Saturday, April 5, 2008

Man, who was a woman, gets pregnant!

Just read this article which says a man, who went through a sex change operation is now pregnant!! When I read this I first thought it was a fake news just like the male pregnancy website. But then if Times Online is carrying the news I wonder.

Either read it at its source URL or read it below where I've copied and pasted the article here.

Thomas Beatie, a married man who used to be a woman, is pregnant with a baby girl

A married man who used to be a woman says that he is pregnant and will give birth to a baby girl in July.

“How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” wrote Thomas Beatie, 34, from the Pacific North West of the United States, in the latest issue of the gay magazine The Advocate.

“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.”

Mr Beatie was born female, named Tracy Lagondino, but had gender reassignment surgery and is now legally male and married to a woman.

He decided to carry a baby for his wife, Nancy, because she had a hysterectomy years ago. He was able to get pregnant because he kept his female organs when he switched genders.

“Sterilisation is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights,” he writes. “Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire but a human desire.” The couple, who have been together for ten years, run a custom screenprinting business in Bend, Oregon, where neighbours do not know that Mr Beatie was once a woman.

“Our desire to work hard, buy our first home and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child,” he wrote.

Before becoming pregnant, Mr Beatie stopped the testosterone injections he was receiving as part of his gender reassignment. “It had been roughly eight years since I had my last menstrual cycle so this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly. My body regulated itself after about four months and I didn’t have to take any exogenous oestrogen, progesterone or fertility drugs to aid my pregnancy,” he wrote.

The couple bought donor vials from a cryogenic sperm bank and, facing resistance and prejudice from doctors, resorted to home insemination. “Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Healthcare professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognise Nancy as my wife. Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family doesn’t even know I’m transgender,” he said.

Mr Beatie’s first successful insemination ended in a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy with triplets that required surgery, resulting in the loss of all his embryos and his right Fallopian tube. “When my brother found out about my loss, he said, ‘It’s a good thing that happened. Who knows what kind of monster it would have been?’,” he wrote.

The second pregnancy resulted in a baby girl who is due to be born on July 3. “I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family,” he wrote.

Mr Beatie would not be the first transgender man to give birth, according to Lisa Masterson, an obstetrician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.

“A transgender man can be pregnant because he has the same organs as a woman,” Dr Masterson said on the ABC Good Morning America show.

Dr Masterson said, however, that transgendered men face special health risks resulting from their sex change. “It’s really important that he doesn’t take any testosterone early on in the pregnancy and later on,” she said. “That can cause male-type characteristics in the female baby.”

Some of the Beaties’ neighbours in Bend voiced scepticism about the pregnancy claim. One resident, Josh Love, told ABC: “I couldn’t say that he looks pregnant. I can stick my stomach out and almost make it look like that. I think it’s kind of bizarre. I don’t know if I believe it or not.”

The Advocate said it had confirmed the story with Mr Beatie’s doctor.


I have mixed feelings towards this whole thing. I am not sure if I should clap at this miracle of medical science or feel funny about the whole thing. I don't know why but I found the picture of the pregnant male guy little disgusting.

8 comments:

  1. Oops ..you too...this news is flooding over all the TV channels ,esp Aaj tak with all the pics from past one week.

    And yes , even I could not accept the whole thing , for no known reasons. And thats why I feel irritated to read / see this news :P
    No offense to your post :)

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  2. Here it was nowhere in the news, so I'm quite happy to know about this through you. I didn't find the picture disgusting at all. And I'm surprised but I actually find it qute, really cute. A fahter who is sacrificing so much. I guess it demands a lot of guts to be that what he is. From what I know, America still has a comparitively narrow minded attitude towards gays and lesbians. (as a biologist I would have liked to say 'she', but to respect his feelings I better stick to 'he', as that is the identity he choose.)
    And since your exposure to such things has been much less, living in India, as we as a society are still too prude accept such facts. Such things need time, but the society needs to open up to such things to realise that such things are as normal and were as part and parcel of life, only not mentioned openly. But as you said, modern science has made it all more complicated. :)

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  3. BTW, there is no miracle of science involved, believe me. At the most, the miracle of nature. This person can only make himself look like a male by taking hormones. That's it. Ok, some plastic surgery was also involved. And what's wrong with it if he can live a life he wants to, don't we all want that.
    And isn't every birth of a child a miracle?

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  5. You know, ~Nm, I didn't find it disgusting either. I have always wondered why people get all het up about homosexuality and transgenders.. I find that it is much MUCH less unnatural than a man raping a baby a 2 year old baby! How can someone do that?? be sexually aroused by an innocent baby? THAT to me goes totally against God's natural law. And such people get away with far less consequences than those poor people who do nothing than love someone- body, mind and soul, albeit of the same gender.
    I think this is one of the rare times when you and I are not of the same mind..:-)

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  6. Nothing can seem strange anymore after reading this.

    I know one thing for sure ... the more we fiddle with nature ... the more nature will get back at us ...

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  7. reading this article today was a revelation to me. not about my views on transgender, transvestites, or bi-sexuals, bi-curious... whatever label we give it. the revelation to me was that for the first time, i could actually see a same-sex couple as a legitimate couple trying to brave the odds against the world's tide dictated by religion etc. no, the culprit isn't the mind-numbing feed of romanticism from our bollywood that has turned me soft. i now wonder what has changed my views on this issue (from bhuwan's above because 4 years ago we both were alike about it). interesting how we change without knowing... have you felt that for somethings too?

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  8. Seeing the picture I felt like vomiting!

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