Trans man gives birth to second child
Trans man Thomas Beatie has given birth to his second child.
The healthy baby boy was born yesterday, three days premature.
Beatie and his wife Nancy had their first child, a daughter named Susan Juliette, last June. He decided to carry the child because his wife could not conceive.
Despite being legally defined as a man for over ten years and having had some gender reassignment surgery, Beatie kept his female reproductive organs. ABC News reports he had a natural birth and his wife will breastfeed the baby as she did with their first child. They have yet to choose a name for their new son.
Before starting a family, Beatie had been on hormone treatments, but stopped taking them in order to resume menstruating and conceive through artificial insemination. Both children were conceived with the help of sperm donors.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey in April 2008, Beatie said: “I actually opted not to do anything to my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day. I see pregnancy as a process and it doesn’t define who I am.”
In a letter to Advocate.com last year, he wrote, “I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. Unlike those in same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships, or civil unions, Nancy and I are afforded the more than 1,100 federal rights of marriage.
“Sterilisation is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.”
