(NYT Op-ed) Sarah Elizabeth Richards –Transgender men and women have the right to be parents, too

Admittedly, the idea of a “pregnant man” makes many people uncomfortable, and photos of Mr. Inkster caressing his bulging belly are startling. The issue is controversial even within the transgender community. “Some people believe if you’re a trans man you shouldn’t be wanting to bear kids,” Jamison Green, the author of “Becoming a Visible Man,” told me. “That’s not something men do. Others think, If you have a body part that does something, why can’t you use it? It’s your body.”

The issue brings up unprecedented questions: Do you use your genetic material to reproduce, and at what time during your transition? Before or after hormone therapy? Before undergoing reassignment surgery that will make you sterile? Should a transgender man like Mr. Inkster keep his breasts so he can nurse later? Is it generally psychologically healthier for someone like him to freeze his eggs and have them inseminated and the embryos transferred to a female partner or surrogate, rather than leave his female reproductive parts intact? How might years of estrogen or testosterone therapy affect eggs and sperm?

These questions matter.

Read it all.

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, Anthropology, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Psychology, Science & Technology, Sexuality, Theology

8 comments on “(NYT Op-ed) Sarah Elizabeth Richards –Transgender men and women have the right to be parents, too

  1. Capt. Father Warren says:

    [i]The issue brings up unprecedented questions[/i]

    And the Book of Genesis provides easy to understand answers via God’s design of the Universe.

    Ignore it at your own peril.

  2. Milton Finch says:

    “It’s Frãnken- shtÄ“Ä“n.”

  3. Catholic Mom says:

    [blockquote]
    [Kyle’s house, night. Gerald returns home with a walker and a highly altered appearance. He now makes dolphin sounds and has a blowhole and dorsal fin on his back, and his legs have been joined together to make a flipper. His hands have been altered to look like ventral fins. He walks in the front door.]

    Sheila: [seeing the new Gerald] Gerald! What happened to you?!

    Gerald: That doctor is a miracle worker, Sheila. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. [approaches Ike] Look, Ike! You’re daddy’s a dolphin!

    Sheila: A dolphin?!?!

    Gerald: [turns around slowly to face her] Sheila, -it was wrong of us to be so judgmental of Kyle. If he isn’t happy with who he is, then who are we to deny hm surgery that will make him feel better about himself?

    Sheila: [distraught] Gerald, this is crazy!

    Gerald: I used to think I was crazy. But Dr, Biber told me that there are a lot of other people out there who are transpecies. All I did is change my appearance to look the way I felt… [places his right ventral fin to his heart] here. And I’m telling you now that if we don’t let Kyle do the same, he may never be happy. Ever! We owe him more than that, Sheila. We owe him understanding! [his blowhole goes off]

    [Denver Convention Center, by the restrooms in the hall. An usher stands nearby]

    Gerald: Eh excuse me, where, where is the bathroom for dolphins?

    Usher: We don’t… have one.

    Gerald: Well where the hell am I supposed to go to the bathroom? I need a large tank with salt water.

    Usher: Ahhh- Too bad?

    Gerald: Damnit you people have to make special arrangements for transpecies people like me! I may be a dolphin, but I’m also a lawyer!
    [/blockquote]

  4. upnorfjoel says:

    There just seems to be no end to just how messed up we can find the human condition in these times and still see someone with cloudy enough senses to find normalcy in it. Enter Sarah Elizabeth Richards.
    All I can do is continue to pray that these people find the help they really need, NOT the kind of “help” Ms. Richards is willing to prescribe to them via ObamaCare.
    She did acknowledge one thing correctly though: there is a pre-existing “condition” here! Are there enough consonants in the alphabet to label it?

  5. Capt. Father Warren says:

    2 Timothy 4:3-4, ” For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
    *************
    We are way beyond politics; we are into unrestrained human lust which is simply enabled by political operatives who are also lusting, lusting after more power. It is almost a symbiotic relationship. But of course it is totally unsustainable and along with all the other unsustainable things we are doing as a culture will feed into the eventual collapse of things. Pray for God’s mercy.

  6. Jim the Puritan says:

    “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

  7. Charles52 says:

    The transmutation of desires into rights is a sign of legal, philosophical, and moral confusion.

  8. Uh Clint says:

    Something is wrong here. A woman decides that she should be a man, and has sexual change surgery – but leaves her ovaries/uterus intact. “He” then wants to have a child, and:

    “there was no medical reason to deny him; his baby-making parts were the same as any woman’s.

    Mr. Inkster eventually found another clinic that helped him conceive via in vitro fertilization and donor sperm, and in October 2010, he gave birth to a daughter, Elise.”

    Talk about hypocritical! He wants to be a man, but he retains female reproductive organs, and carries a child to term. He doesn’t want to be a man; he wants to be what I’d call a “polysexual”, functioning in whatever role he may happen to feel like at the time.

    If “she” was truly serious about wanting to be a man, then a hysterectomy would have been a requisite part of the sex-change surgery. Anything less is a mere token; it affects the superficial, but not the definitive aspects of sexuality.

    Mind you, I’m not in favor of any of this – I just find it really cowardly to decline to completely embrace the change that seems to be so essential to one’s being.