A transgender man who recently made news by announcing that he is pregnant appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show Thurs., April 3.
Thomas Beatie, 34, who is from Bend, Ore., told The Advocate magazine that he is pregnant, carrying a girl for him and his wife. When Beatie made the transition from female to male, he decided to keep his reproductive organs so he could become pregnant.
'I'm a person and I have the right to have my own biological child,' Beatie— formerly Tracy Lagondino, a former Miss Teen Hawaii USA finalist—said on the show. Among other things, Beatie said that early on, he never felt female. Beatie's wife, Nancy, said that she injected the sperm into Thomas from a sperm bank.
While some have praised Winfrey for making Beatie feel welcome on her show, others have questioned and even mocked the transman. According to PageOneQ.com, the team on MSNBC's Morning Joe show made several cracks; Mika Brzezinski said, 'This is what makes our business terrible. This kind of news—it's so stupid and useless, and yet, I can't get enough of it.'
In a press release, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force stated that '...Throughout history people have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceive and bear children. In this factual context, the Thomas Beatie story is neither unique nor exceptional. ... The real story is that a family seeking to have children has been terribly mistreated by the media and, it appears, by the medical profession. All families deserve care and respect, period.'
Beatie's child is due around July 3, according to his recently published article in The Advocate.