Mother, father, child © Jens Kalaene
Special headlines currently makes Hayden Cross. The 20-year-old from Great Britain has officially been a man for three years – but is still biologically a woman. That is why he was able to get pregnant.
The ID card for pregnant women says "Mr Hayden Cross". That is also correct, because since three years Cross is officially a man. Nevertheless, the Briton is now six months pregnant. This is being treated as a sensation in the British media, but is actually easy to explain: The young man from Gloucester in the west of England is in the process of undergoing gender reassignment surgery. He was biologically born a woman and is therefore capable of carrying a child to term.
But for the past three years, Cross has officially been a man, becoming the first man in the kingdom to give birth within the UK's NHS health service. His belly, which the 20-year-old proudly presents to the British media, caused quite a stir. He answers questions and is convinced he can become a good father.
Pregnant thanks to sperm donation
Cross actually wanted to freeze his eggs before his gender reassignment so that he could become a father later on. But the national health service NHS rejected it. Private treatment would have cost him several thousand pounds, which the unemployed Briton was unable to find.
So he chose a different path. He found a sperm donor on Facebook and actually got pregnant. He had to suspend his sex reassignment treatment with hormones to do so. This is also the reason why he decided to get pregnant so early.
"Two weeks after I put the seeds in, I got pregnant," Hatton told the British newspaper The Sun. Although he was happy to be pregnant. But he also has mixed feelings, he says, because he knew he would have to interrupt his gender transition: "I had just started to finally become myself and physically a man, but now my body is developing in the other direction again for now."He is worried about how his body will change during the pregnancy, but he also hopes to inspire other people to be comfortable in their own skin.
About 3.000 people a year receive gender reassignment treatments with hormones in Britain, two-thirds of whom are biologically men who want to physically become women. The treatment is fully covered by the National Health Service NHS. The NHS recorded 330 gender reassignment surgeries in 2015 alone.
Not the first pregnant man
Hayden Cross is not the first pregnant man to cause a stir in the media. In 2008, Thomas Beatie, an American from Arizona, gave birth to his first child. Beatie said Hayden Cross needs "a thick skin" to get through what he now faces. He had been subjected to hostility and hatred. People called him a pervert and threatened to kill him and his unborn baby.
In 2013, a man in Germany also gave birth to a child and was entered in the civil registry as the father. In Graz, Austria, a man gave birth to a child just last month. In many countries, a total physical change is no longer necessary to officially match gender.
Despite individual high-profile cases, the number of transgender men worldwide who wish to have and do have children remains low. It is not known how many of the trans men in the UK want to get pregnant. In a BBC interview, a psychiatrist called the number of such people "vanishingly small".
Still, the British Medical Association, the professional body for British doctors, has now recommended that in the future it should refer to "pregnant people" rather than "expectant mothers" – so as not to exclude intersex and transgender people, also known as transsexual people. Organizations and transgender people welcomed the push. Pregnant men are not "expectant mothers", but fathers.