A transgender male has given birth to a child in Chile, in what is believed to be the first such publicly known case for the Latin American country.

Originally born a woman, the individual who goes by the fictitious name of ‘Matthew’ for news interviews, was allowed by a judge to keep female reproductive organs while re-registering as a male.

According to Matthew, the pregnancy was not planned.

Chilean TV news channel Mega interviewed Matthew and his male partner earlier this week, both who declined to appear in front of news cameras and kept all of their details private.

The only information given by the parents was the baby’s birthplace, the northern town of Arica close to the border with Peru.

In the interview, Matthew discussed life before and after the pregnancy.

‘We know that our case is a milestone, a precedent,’ said Matthew.

‘Along the way we discovered loop holes and such, but the entire thing has been so normal.’

He added: ‘Our life hasn’t changed in absolutely any respect.’

Rolando Jimenez, president of Chile’s leading sexual diversity organization Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh), told news agency EFE: ‘This is a challenge to our laws and political system, to understand that there are different ways of living with sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identities and family conformations.’

Jimenez added: ‘This is the first time a case like this is publicly known, but I have no doubt that there must be others.’

Movilh’s president also discussed Matthew’s ability to register as a man without being asked by the courts to complete a sex change operation.

Jimenez said that ‘the law has changed’ adding that ‘historically the courts would only grant a gender identity once a sex change operation was complete.’

‘In the past few years, we [Movilh] have presented several demands to civil courts requesting that gender identity changes be granted without a completed sex change. In a few cases, the courts granted our requests.’

The first publicly-known trans birth in Chile comes on the heels of Chile’s leading conservative party the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) proposing a constitutional amendment that would say a child can only have a man and a woman for parents.

This initiative came after a lesbian couple submitted an application for both of the woman to be registered as mothers of the child born to one of the women. A court in the capital city of Santiago rejected the couple’s application.

Earlier this month, Chile’s congress agreed to hear a bill called the Life Partner Agreement, which seeks to grant legal protections to civil unions for both same-sex and opposite-sex partners.

Same-sex marriage is currently not recognized in Chile, though leading presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet said earlier this month that if she’s elected president, she would legalize same-sex marriage.



