When I talk about our research team’s work on pregnancy in transgender people, people often recall Thomas Beatie, a pregnant man who appeared on “Oprah” and in People magazine in 2008. The media focus on Beatie and his pregnancy provoked public fascination that tended to overshadow the everyday lived realities of being pregnant as a trans person.
Transgender people, as opposed to cisgender people, have a gender identity that is different from the gender they were assigned at birth. Some may go on hormone therapy to help align their body with their gender identity. Like most trans men, Beatie went off testosterone during his pregnancy because it was medically advised as standard practice. But testosterone therapy is often essential to the mental and physical health of many trans men as well as some nonbinary people whose genders don’t fit within the categories of man or woman. What is the experience of pausing treatment like for them? Why do medical guidelines recommend going off testosterone?
