The Pregnant Man: Thomas Beatie.

Thomas Beattie lives in Oregon and is married to a woman named Nancy. He’s pregnant.

To our neighbors, my wife, Nancy, and I don’t appear in the least unusual. To those in the quiet Oregon community where we live, we are viewed just as we are — a happy couple deeply in love. Our desire to work hard, buy our first home, and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child.

I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. Unlike those in same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships, or civil unions, Nancy and I are afforded the more than 1,100 federal rights of marriage. Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.

Thomas Beatie, a former woman who is now a pregnant man, defended his decision today to have a baby, saying he has a “right to have a biological child.”

Despite removing his breasts, growing a wispy beard and legally having his gender changed from female to male, Beatie, 34, kept his female sex organs intact because he hoped to have a child some day.

After years of struggling with his sexual identity and deciding to live as a man, he did the most womanly thing possible — he became pregnant.

In an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey, Beatie said his lifelong desire to have children motivated him to use his still working female reproductive organs when he learned that Nancy, his wife of five years, was unable to conceive.

“I actually opted not to do anything to my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day. I see pregnancy as a process and it doesn’t define who I am,” Beatie told Winfrey.

“I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I’m a person and I have the right to have a biological child.”