Salon 1

Pregnant Man Gives Birth 6 July 2008

I talked about this subject before, but there is an update.  CBS News reported on 04 Jul 2008, I believe it was on the Early Show (I am not sure because I only saw the video) that the “pregnant man” gave birth.  The CBS “news” (and I use that term for descriptive purposes only) woman continued to call Thomas Beatie a man.  They had a guest on to talk about it, and presented him as if he were some kind of expert, but he actually only worked for People magazine – one of the lowest forms of print journalism being just a step above tabloids.  They asked him his opinion and he stated that Thomas sees himself as the father.  Now, his statement itself was misleading if you weren’t paying attention to the words, but, for those that didn’t read my previous post on the subject, Thomas Beatie is not really a man and is 100% female.  It should not be news at all that “she” gave birth considering she has a uterus and it was natural child birth.

Many people fear that in more totalitarian countries, the people are often uninformed by the press.  In the US, we have a new trend, where the people are illinformed for the sake of sensationalism and ratings.  This is very disturbing.  People that don’t understand the science behind this controversy must be very confused from watchng the news, especially when CBS news reported that the birth was natural (e.g., no C section).  Maybe if the news spent more time on the many more important topics out there (like, I don’t know, the war maybe), we wouldn’t be having this discussion.  If news agencies would rather run stories that they think will get people to watch out of curiosity, that’s their choice, but you must be factual, otherwise, you are not fulfilling the role of jouralism in society.