Husband Carries Child for "His" Wife

While taking my grandchildren to school this morning, the radio was tuned to my grandson's favorite rock station. I usually try to tune it out that early in the day, but my ear caught a tirade from the radio d.j. about a couple from Bend, Oregon (Thomas and Nancy) who are having a baby and had been interviewed on the Oprah Show the day before. The twist to this story is that Thomas is the one who is pregnant. Thomas is a transgender male.

As the radio host raged on and on about this 'terrible decay of mankind' I began to wonder about mankind myself. What has happened to us?

The d.j. explained that Thomas had been born female and decided to change gender about ten years ago because she (known as Tracy at that time) and her same-sex partner, Nancy had been together for several years and wanted to be legally married.

When Tracy decided to become a transgender male she had chest reconstruction surgery and testosterone therapy and kept her female reproductive organs. Sterilization is not a requirement for a sex reassignment. Thomas and Nancy have lived as man and wife for the past several years. Many of their friends, neighbors and even some of Nancy's family members do not know that Thomas is transgender.

The couple have been together for ten years and want to have children. Nancy can not conceive because she's had a hysterectomy, so the two of them decided that Thomas would be the one to get pregnant and carry the baby. He stopped his hormone therapy two years ago and the couple used donor sperm to conceive a child. The baby girl is due in three months. PERIOD. That should be the end of the story, but, unfortunately it is not.

When I got back home, I did a computer search to find out more about this story and found hundreds of articles about Thomas and Nancy of Bend, Oregon. I grew more and more upset and angry as I read. Apparently, a large number of mankind view this in the same way as the radio personality I heard this morning: 'a terrible decay of mankind' .

Not only did most of the articles voice very negative and cruel statements regarding the couple, but many also used headlines oozing sensationalism. Anything to make a freak show out of the situation. Some writers called the whole thing a hoax . Most of the articles invited comments from the public which were, for the most part, belittling, ignorant, narrow-minded and discriminating.

I was surprised and shocked at many of the quotes I read from some highly educated people in elite positions. In a statement to Canada's National Post by Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Center for Medicine, Ethics and Law at Mc Gill University in Montreal, Canada, she said: "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."

Armen Hareyan, publisher and CEO of eMaxHealth, an independent health news website, added: "As a Christian I believe this is morally wrong. I feel that this is just too far and that they are trying to do an experiment with the child. If they wanted to have a child, they could take an infant from an orphanage. They should not be doing this."

I was a little more encouraged by a statement from Christopher White, director of education and training at San Francisco State University. He said: "I think we are going to continue to see all sorts of different types of families and this is just one example. Some are going to challenge people's ideas of what is acceptable and normal and there is going to be a lot of resistance to that. Yes, this is very unorthodox, but at the same time this is about the couple's decision to have a child and I think they deserve the same respect and care any other person would expect."

I believe this too. This is a couple who desperately wanted a child. The 'woman' of the couple was unable to have the baby herself. The 'man' could and he did. It's as simple as that. I'm sure many husbands would do the same if they could. Medical science tells us that this will be a reality in the not too distant future. It will be possible for a biological man to be implanted with an artifically inseminated egg and he will be able to grow a fetus inside his abdominal cavity. The baby will then be removed surgically at term.

As Thomas points out in his article in The Advocate Magazine: "Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire". He also stated, "I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."

And, if you ask me, that's all that really matters.