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| Pregnant transgendered man illustration |
A newborn baby will legally have no mother after he was born to a transgendered man.
Officials in Europe have agreed to list the transgendered man as the baby’s father on the birth certificate.
The transsexual man is the first in Europe to give birth to a baby after getting pregnant through a sperm donor.
The man, who was born a woman, delivered his baby with a midwife in the Neukoelln district of Berlin. He insisted on a home birth because he refused to be listed as the mother on hospital documents, which is a legal requirement in Germany.
The father, who kept the reproductive organs of women, has been taking hormone replacement therapies for years to change her sex.
Details about the sperm donor has been withheld from the public as the father wanted to protect his child. It is official that the child does not have a mother, as the father is a single parent.
"The person in question did not want to appear as the mother, but rather as the father on the birth certificate, and that request has been honored," a spokesperson for the Berlin Senate Administration for Internal Affairs said.
The father also demanded that the sex of the child not be disclosed. Authorities denied the request and announced the child was a boy.
In 2011, the German Supreme Court ruled that a person did not have to have their reproductive organs removed "for civil legal recognition of the perceived gender." That's why the transgender was able to be listed as the father of the child without removing the female reproductive organs.
According to sources, the state welfare office in Germany intends to closely monitor the child in case of "psychological problems" as this is the first such case in the country.
This is the first case in Europe of a child born to a transsexual father, but in the U.S., the case of Thomas Beatie, the transgender man who has had three children, is well-known.
Beatie was seeking a divorce from his wife, but was rejected because the judge said he failed to prove if he was a man when he married.