A TRANSGENDER man who is six months pregnant said in a television interview yesterday that he had always wanted to have a child and considers it "a miracle".
"It's not a male or female desire to have a child. It's a human desire," said thinly bearded Thomas Beatie, who was once a teenage beauty queen.
"I have a very stable male identity," he added, in an interview, broadcast on The Oprah Winfrey Sh
ow in the United States.
Mr Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man ten years ago.
He began taking testosterone treatment and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.
"I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day," he said.
Mr Beatie's wife, Nancy, said she inseminated him with a syringe, using sperm purchased from a sperm bank.
Now, he said, his size 32 jeans were getting a bit tight and his shirts a bit stretched.
Mrs Beatie, to whom he has been married for five years and who has two grown daughters by a previous marriage, also appeared on the show, saying the couple's roles will not change once the baby, a girl, is born.
"He's going to be the father and I'm going to be the mother," she said.
Their marriage is legal and he is recognised under Oregon state law as a man.
"I can't believe it. I can't believe she's inside me," said Mr Beatie.
His obstetrician, Dr Kimberly James, who practises in the town of Bend, where the couple live, told Winfrey: "This is a normal pregnancy.
This baby is totally healthy."
The Beaties said they decided to go public so they could control the way the news got out. "We're just going to have the baby now," Mrs Beatie said. "If we have to, we'll go hide."
Winfrey called the development "a new definition of what diversity means for everybody."
The full article contains 339 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
