Theyre Having a Baby

Scott and Thomas Moore met six years ago at a support group for transgender people in the Bay Area. They lost touch but found each other again. After becoming friends, partners, and then husbands, the pair made a home in Thomas's tiny hometown of Weed, Calif., with his adopted sons, Logan and Gregory.

But now Scott, 20, and Thomas, 30, are having a baby this March, a boy they plan to name Miles. Sure, their story mirrors that of Thomas Beatie, another transgender man whose decision to have a baby rocked the world in 2007. But the Moores' story has a rather timely aspect -- for months they were denied care by doctors and were told that Scott's pregnancy was too high-risk. Thomas tells Advocate.com about his and Scott's ordeals with discriminatory doctors and the process of stopping hormone use to have a baby.

Advocate.com: How did you and Scott decide to have a baby?
Thomas Moore: We were watching a movie together -- we were watching Baby Mama. And I was the one talking about wanting to have another child, but I did not want to go through the adoption process again. It's very invasive, but I was willing to do it, if need be. So I asked Scott how he felt about having more kids. We kind of talked about it. I was not an option because I've had all my surgeries, but obviously I would do it, if I could, especially since I'm more comfortable with the person I am today.

At first Scott was like, "You know, I don't think so, hell no, this will be crazy." But then over the next couple of days he would start bringing that up and asking, "Well, how would that work? What about my hormones? Will my facial hair fall out?" So we had to figure out the answers to a lot of these questions. By about the second day, he was really considering doing this. But within a week, we made the decision that he was going to do it. I mean, we had a lot of fears, especially about being in a small town. We saw what happened to Thomas Beatie. He's less than 300 miles from us, in Bend, Ore. If you've been to Bend from almost anywhere in the country, you've probably been through Weed. You may have blinked and missed it, but you've probably been through it. So Scott was very paranoid about the whole thing and very uncomfortable about it.

So the first thing was that he had to go off hormones for a very long time. It was horrible. You know, some guys complain about their girlfriends when they go through menopause or whatever, but you take a tranny boy off his testosterone and it gets ugly fast. It took us about 10 to 11 months.

How did your children take all of this in?
My kids are the most open, respectful people. My father is gay. He's had the same partner for 30 years, so I grew up -- well, my mom wasn't as open, since they were divorced -- but I grew up with a homosexual parent, and having a parent that society deems as a deviant parent. But when I lived with my dad and his partner, I did well in school, I didn't get into trouble, I got straight A's, so I knew it was possible to have a healthy family

What about the media calling Scott the second "pregnant man?"
Thomas Beatie was not the first trans man to give birth. And now, to them, we're the second. No, he's not the second. People are freaking out about it, even in our own community, but we're not the ones saying this -- we've said from the beginning, there's many, many, many trans men who have done this. We don't claim to be the second; we just claim to be a family who claims to not be traditional and is having a baby. The only reason we did it was because Scott was denied health care for several months.

How were you turned away from medical care?
We went out to [Las Cruces], N.M., to get some time off and debrief, and Scott's mom really wanted to spend some time with us, so we went down there for four months, and we could not get an [obstetrician].

How did you and Scott deal with being pregnant without an obstetrician for so long?
I called, and I'm not joking or exaggerating, but I literally called every doctor in New Mexico. No one would take us. We finally found this midwife clinic, and fortunately her partner was transgender. She said, "No problem -- can you be here in an hour?" But even then, because of New Mexico laws, we needed a general practitioner to say that Scott was not high-risk, and because of that, we couldn't get one. So we knew we were coming back after Christmas and then coming home. We figured we would find a GP out there. Our godmother, who lives down the street from us, was wonderful throughout all of this. She found an OB, got on the phone with them, told them the situation, and we had an appointment in two weeks. So small-town America, we can get a doctor, but big city, we can't. Las Cruces is a very Catholic place.

How are you holding up with all of the media attention? Are your kids running into problems at their school?
You know, it's not really that big of a deal here. We've been open and honest -- we told the school, we told the principal, we told the teachers, that this was going to be coming up. When we first agreed to do Closer magazine, in the U.K., we researched it and we knew they didn't print online, so we figured we could control the media frenzy for a little bit.

How are you preparing to have your baby?
We're pretty prepared. We pretty much have everything. Our girlfriends are having a baby shower for us next month, but they want to know what to get us. I mean if you want to talk about an average gay couple -- what do we do? We went shopping. Especially when there's nothing around to do, or if Scott's feeling a little blue, I would just say, "Hey, let's go shopping!" and it would cheer him right up. We just need to buy more diapers. Scott's stressed about that. That's probably what we're going to get for our baby shower, because that's the only thing we don't have.