by Maja Gojkovic
You may be thinking to yourself, has the world gone crazy?- a pregnant man?
A pregnant man is exactly what this story is about, although there is a little more to the story. Before you start thinking is this the next scientifically founded leap of evolution, experiment, joke or accident gone wrong like in the film Junior, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is not and I recommend you read on.
The pregnant man Thomas Beatie, 34, of Bend, Oregon, used to be a woman before undergoing gender reassignment surgery (a sex change). Prior to gender reassignment, Thomas was born a female whose parents called her Tracy.
As a child, Tracy remembered a normal childhood; never once feeling like she was trapped in the wrong body. At the age of twenty four, Tracy started to have feelings for women and began her first relationship with a woman. During this time, she said she found her self and her identity. She expressed to her girlfriend that she wanted to become a man. The girlfriend then told her why not just be a lesbian, but, as Tracy explained, it was not just about a feeling, but more a way of life.
Tracy then went on to change her name to Thomas and started taking Testosterone medications and then surgically had his breasts removed. However, he opted not to have his female reproductive organs removed. His reason he said for this was that he one day wanted to have children.
This story has swept all over the world as the headline still continues to catch peoples attention. Thomas has recieved a mountain of media coverage since the story first broke and has been featured in People magazine and on the Oprah Winfrey show.
On the Oprah show, Oprah said that as a man one doesn’t normally have a feeling to carry a child but Thomas explained that his need for a child did not define who he is by gender but was a natural human desire experienced normally by both men and women. He said: “Different is normal and love makes a family. And that’s all that matters.”
Beatie appeared on the show accompanied by his wife, Nancy. The audience was shown footage of his ultrasound scan and heard the sound of a heartbeat.
As he saw the scan on the monitor, Beatie told the doctor: “She’s kicking. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s inside me. This is a miracle. We see this as a miracle.”
He described pregnancy as a “human desire”, not limited to women. “I’m a person and I have the right to have my own biological child,” he said. Beatie said pregnancy did not make him feel more feminine. “It doesn’t make me want to go and shave my legs or something,” he said. “I’m a man, I just happen to be a pregnant man.”
He told Oprah he had had a sex change, but the reason he had not altered his reproductive organs was because he wanted to have a child. “I didn’t know how, it was just a dream,” he said. “There was no plan laid out.”
During the interview Thomas said many organisations whom the couple had contacted for help had advised them against going public, warning: “The world’s not ready for something like this.”
But he said: “I think people will be shocked because no one’s ever heard of a man giving birth before. “I guess it’s a shocking concept, but in this day and age that’s possible. And it’s happening now.”
Dr Kimberley James, the couple’s doctor in Bend, Oregon, told the show the pregnancy was “normal”. “This baby’s totally healthy and this is, I consider, an average pregnancy,” she said.
Beatie is legally married to his wife and has been married for five years. He was a Miss Teen Hawaii finalist but described himself as a tomboy growing up. Beatie told Winfrey he “found himself” at college after a boyfriend told him he was not feminine enough. “I feel like I was meant to be exactly who I am today,” he said.
As stange as it sounds to some people, in this day and age anything is possible and although this is a strange concept for some of us to comprehend now, it could become the norm, and as normal as a woman having a baby.
