Britain has it’s first official ‘male mother’. A transsexual man, believed to be in his 30s, has given birth to a baby boy, reported the Daily Telegraph.
Although he legally changed his gender to male, the man retained his ovaries and uterus while taking female hormones to reverse the effects of his female-to-male sex change, so was able to become pregnant.
The birth has led some medical experts to call for an into inquiry into the issues surrounding transgender births and the effects it may have on children.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, speaking to the Daily Telegraph said: “We have to sit up and consider these things. I don’t think it is in the interests of the child to distort nature this way. We are prepared to do anything possible to fulfil the rights of the adult. But I think it is at the expense and rights and welfare of the child.”
While the man is the first known transgender to have given birth in the UK, the first publicised transgender birth happened four years ago in Arizona, USA. Thomas Beatie, 38, has now given birth to 3 children while living legally as a man.
The medical director of the Create Fertility Centre in Toronto, Clifford Librach, revealed to the Telegraph that it was providing hormone treatment for a number of male sex change patients with intact wombs who are hoping to become mothers.
The clinic would not confirm how many men are pregnant or when any babies are due to be born, but he has defended his stance in the Canadian media. “People have this misunderstanding about their [transsexuals’] situation,” he said. “If they have organs from one or the other sex than the one they were born with, it’s really no different from any of the other treatments we do.”
