Pregnant Man in Oregon

Not sure WHAT to think about this story today in the Post that an Oregan man says he's is pregnant with a baby girl. So REALLY, he's not a man, just dressing as a man, but he was born a woman and kept the female parts, but dresses as a man and lives as a man. I can tell you now that the title of the article alone is getting millions of internet hits.

Here's the story:
Thomas Beatie's first-person story appears in the April issue of The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based newsmagazine for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people.

According to the story, Mr. Beatie was born a woman but decided to become a transgender male and legally changed his sex to male. He had his breasts surgically removed and started bimonthly testosterone injections, but kept his vagina.

Now identifying as male, Mr. Beatie legally married Nancy Beatie, the story says. The pair wanted a biological baby but Ms. Beatie was unable to carry a child. So they decided Mr. Beatie would carry the child.

"How does it feel to be a pregnant man," Mr. Beatie writes in the article. "Incredible. 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. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child ... I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."

Before getting pregnant he stopped injecting testosterone, and his body "regulated itself after about four months," he writes in the Advocate piece.

One year and nine doctors later, the couple got access to a cryogenic sperm bank and purchased anonymous donor vials for a home insemination. Without the aid of fertility drugs, progesterone or exogenous estrogen, Mr. Beatie got pregnant, he says. But the pregnancy was ectopic, and rarer still, with triplets. After surgery, Mr. Beatie lost all his embryos and his right fallopian tube.

But the second pregnancy has been a success, writes Mr. Beatie: "We are happily awaiting her birth, with an estimated due date of July 3, 2008."

The National Post could not independently confirm the story. But Michelle Garcia, an editorial assistant at the magazine, said The Advocate verified the pregnancy with Mr. Beatie's gynecologist. She said a photo on the site of a shirtless, heavily pregnant man sprouting facial hair is indeed Mr. Beatie.

Yesterday, the couple-- who run a T-shirt printing company called Define Normal -- refused to tell their story, citing U.S. deals with TV and print media outlets.

"It's a big deal and we want to be able to tell our story," Ms. Beatie told the National Post. "We'd love everybody on board as long as they're understanding and are going to tell our story and not their own."

Mr. Beatie writes in The Advocate that "wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.

"Our situation ultimately will ask everyone to embrace the gamut of human possibility and to define for themselves what is normal."

Ethicist Margaret Somerville says Mr. Beatie's story speaks to the uprooting of the biologically natural family, a process that began with same-sex marriage.

"Once you take away that fundamental biological reality, once you say that family is what you define it as ... then you can do this sort of thing," said Ms. Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.

"Where I would do a reversal on this is to say, 'You've artificially made yourself a man. You're not a man, you're a woman and you're having a baby and you're actually having your own baby. Just because you put on a clown suit, doesn't mean that you don't still exist underneath.' "

She added: "It's a very touchy thing, this deconstruction of our biological reality and the institutions that have existed across all kinds of societies over thousands and thousands of years to establish stability, respect and certainty. I think we're just playing with fire."

It sure was different in the Schwarzenegger movie. A pregnant man would certainly turn heads on the street. Thoughts?
- LT