CREATIVE NON-FICTION
A Note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Man with a Uterus
I have to be pro-choice; abortion access could be a matter of life and death for a guy like me
CW: Sexual assault statistics, suicidal ideation, and mental health mentioned in passing without details
Her sign said, “If men could get pregnant, abortions would be available at ATMs.” Who’s going to tell my fellow protestor that she was walking beside a man with a uterus the whole time she held that sign? I’m not offended exactly. I didn’t know guys like me existed either for much of my life. I had no idea that it was possible to make my body better match who I was inside. I did find this situation awkward and funny though. I checked the nearby ATM and didn’t find any abortions readily available there.
It felt so uncomfortable, standing beside that sign, that I found myself not wanting to chant along with the others, not wanting my Testosterone-altered voice to be heard, since I didn’t know how my body would be read. I finally pulled my shit together and started chanting loudly when a counter-protester started yelling at us though. Then, a few minutes later, I overestimated the linguistic abilities of the crowd and was the only dude to respond to the call for us all to chant “el pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido”, so my deeper voice was heard shouting into a dead silent crowd. That was a Second Puberty cringe moment.
I’m glad that happened, even if most people around me might not have understood the significance of my voice in that space. I’m writing this for women like the one whose protest sign erased me because I really need more people to understand that I exist. The lack of awareness of guys and other gender diverse people with uteruses has medical consequences for us.
After many, many long calls back and forth with our health insurance companies and the management of multiple doctor’s offices and a hospital spanning thousands of dollars of denied claims for almost everything medical we’ve each needed since coming out as trans, I was no longer laughing.
It was a funny novelty when I first received a medical note, medical appointments, and other correspondence confusing me with my wife. This made me a little concerned about the powers of observation of the staff at various locations, given that we look nothing alike, but it still made me laugh at the time. I tried to gently correct the situation several times.
After many, many long calls back and forth with our health insurance companies and the management of multiple doctor’s offices and a hospital spanning thousands of dollars of denied claims for almost everything medical we’ve each needed since coming out as trans, I was no longer laughing. One insurance company made it very clear that they would never cover anything for me again, despite gladly accepting my monthly payments, because I was outed as trans and they considered my Testosterone use to be an unnecessary drug addiction. They denied each unrelated medical claim by trying to link it to gender affirming care that they refused to cover.
Now, imagine if I got pregnant
It’s not so hard for me to imagine, since pharmacists often remind me loudly in front of customers that it’s possible, as I’m picking up my Testosterone meds each month. That’s always pretty humiliating when it happens.
Unlike what my first doctor suggested, it’s quite possible for me to get pregnant while on Testosterone. It’s not uncommon for guys like me to receive misinformation from medical professionals who are concerned about us taking gender affirming hormones. Unfortunately, telling us that we’ll be instantly sterilized after our first shot of Testosterone can cause us to not take precautions that we need to take during any sex that is a pregnancy risk to us.
It’s not uncommon for guys like me to receive misinformation from medical professionals who are concerned about us taking gender affirming hormones.
I’ve received lots of conflicting information about the impact that Testosterone might have on fertility and pregnancy, but every source that I’ve read agrees that, if I were to somehow become pregnant, I would need to immediately come off of my medicine.
Unfortunately, my medicine is helping to protect me from suicidal ideation. Taking even a lower dose has caused disassociation. Taking Testosterone has almost eliminated symptoms of suicidal ideation that I’ve been experiencing to some degree since childhood, despite many challenges that have come up in my life during this time. It is not safe for me to come off of this medication.
Even if it was safe for me to stop taking Testosterone and I could somehow get my health insurance to understand which patient I was to cover my manly childbirth, I would likely have to work through constant misgendering, deadnaming, and a nice collection of emasculating experiences in doctor’s offices and hopefully only one hospital. After all, most people, like the protester beside me, aren’t used to dealing with pregnant men.
I’m sufficiently scared of going to a hospital that I’ve opted to take my chances staying at home even when a hospital trip was recommended by my doctor.
Even under non-gendered circumstances, due to lack of knowledge and sensitivity to trans needs in healthcare, I’m sufficiently scared of going to a hospital that I’ve opted to take my chances staying at home even when a hospital trip was recommended by my doctor. It’s difficult to imagine putting myself in a circumstance where my life was dependent on doctors understanding how my trans body works.
If the worst happened and I ended up pregnant, I don’t feel confident that the medical system would be able to help me to give birth in a way that could keep both my baby and I alive. Many of my experiences give me the impression that it would be extremely dangerous to trust a random doctor in a hospital to know how my medically transitioning body and brain works in a life and death situation, if I made it to that point. Given that, I would want as many safer options as possible for moving forward under those circumstances.
All of this said, Planned Parenthood means so much more to trans men and other gender diverse people than a place to offer us options in the event of pregnancy. It’s also the place that many of us go to for gender affirming care and Hormone Replacement Therapy. Legal attempts to shut down a space like that will have impacts on the trans community that go well beyond pregnancy.
I don’t feel confident that the medical system would be able to help me to give birth in a way that could keep both my baby and I alive.
Beyond that, the legal precedent of the draft that was leaked from the Supreme Court will go on to threaten other basic LGBTQ+ rights, such as marriage, job protection, and other medical protections. I mention this not because the loss of medical autonomy isn’t a serious enough issue for me, but because this is an issue that impacts everyone in all of our wider LGBTQ+ communities. We need your voices, not just as empathetic supporters, but because you’re protecting yourselves, too.
For so many reasons, I don’t have the option to look away from this
Neither do you. Please make sure that your voice is heard at protests, through social media, through donations, and/or by contacting politicians to let them know that we need our rights to be enshrined in the Constitution, so that a Supreme Court that has abandoned its obligation to be non-partisan cannot take them away from us so easily.
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