33 Facts About Thomas Beatie

Thomas Beatie chose to be pregnant, with donated sperm, because his wife Nancy was sterile.

The Thomas Beatie case is the first of its kind on record, where a documented legal male gave birth within a marriage to a woman, and for the first time, a court challenged a marriage where the husband gave birth.

Thomas Beatie was assigned female at birth and grew up in Honolulu as the first of two children.

Thomas Beatie's mother, Susan Nickels Beatie, was born in Minnesota.

Thomas Beatie's father, of Korean and Filipino descent, was born and raised in Hawaii.

Thomas Beatie is related to two former US presidents: William Henry Harrison, his fifth great-grandfather, and Benjamin Harrison, his third great uncle.

Thomas Beatie competed in karate and Taekwondo, winning a junior championship in Taekwondo forms in the 1992 Aloha State Games.

Thomas Beatie graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in health science and later pursued an Executive MBA.

Thomas Beatie suspended testosterone hormone treatment in order to conceive but the first conception was an ectopic pregnancy with triplets that was life-threatening, requiring a surgical intervention, loss of his right fallopian tube and the embryos.

Thomas Beatie became successfully pregnant afterwards, twice with donor sperm, delivering both children without complications.

Thomas Beatie stated that he felt no conflict between his pregnancy and his gender as a man, saying that he considered himself the child's father and his wife Nancy the mother.

Thomas Beatie gave birth to his second child, a son, in 2009.

Thomas Beatie later elected to have "lower" surgery, including the creation of a functional penis.

Thomas Beatie received intense media attention after he wrote a first-person article in the national LGBT magazine The Advocate in 2008.

The article was accompanied by a shirtless photograph of the pregnant Thomas Beatie, which became an object of voyeurism among the public according to the queer theorist Jack Halberstam.

Thomas Beatie made his first television appearance, an hour-long exclusive interview, on the Oprah Winfrey Show in April 2008.

Journalist Barbara Walters announced on The View in November 2008 that Thomas Beatie was expecting his second child.

Thomas Beatie owns a website and T-shirt company featuring the slogan "Define Normal".

Thomas Beatie has made personal appearances on TV talk shows in Spain, Greece, Germany, Italy, Romania, Russia, Japan, Sweden, Poland, and the United Kingdom, and has given keynote speeches at colleges and universities.

Thomas Beatie again attracted media attention when a court in Arizona cited his pregnancies as grounds to refuse to grant him and Nancy a divorce in 2012.

Thomas Beatie initially filed for legal separation, which was afterward converted to a divorce motion by Nancy.

Thomas Beatie was awarded temporary sole custody of his three children and ordered to pay alimony.

The Thomas Beatie case was the first of its kind on record, where a documented legal male gave birth within a marriage to a woman, and the first time a court challenged a marriage based upon a husband's giving birth.

At the time, Arizona did not legally recognize same-sex marriage, so if Thomas Beatie were found to be female according to Arizona statute, the ten-year Thomas Beatie marriage would not be recognized in that state.

The court ruled to give Nancy joint legal decision-making, physical custody and equal parenting time, ordering Thomas Beatie to pay her nearly $240 per month in child support.

Thomas Beatie lobbied to pass the state's first hate crimes legislation, which became law in 2001.

Thomas Beatie spearheaded one-on-one discussions with doctors, politicians, and policy-makers in support of abolishing the sterilization law for Swedish transgender people.

Thomas Beatie's pregnancy has challenged social and legal definitions of what constitutes being a man or a woman.

Thomas Beatie's story helped promote transgender issues in the media; other trans men had given birth before Thomas Beatie, but were neither reported on nor legally recognized as male.

Media studies scholar Laura Tropp writes that Thomas Beatie's experience "forces society to debate the idea of what is a man and what is a woman".

Thomas Beatie's legal case is a precedent-setter for the ability of transgender people to exercise their constitutional right to reproduce and be recognized as their legal gender post transition.

Shortly after Susan was born, Thomas Beatie authored his first book, Labor of Love: The Story of One Man's Extraordinary Pregnancy.

In Labor of Love, Thomas Beatie describes the fight for his right to have a child.