Normal parents: Trans pregnancy and the production of reproducers

Abstract

Background Some trans people want to create families in a variety of ways that include pregnancy, but often face obstacles in doing so. Aims This paper explores how trans pregnancy is treated as exceptional and out of the ordinary by reproductive institutions. Methods Analysis of case studies demonstrates the ubiquity of institutional obstacles to trans pregnancy and how reproductive institutions unnecessarily render trans pregnancy exceptional. Results Reproductive institutions shape the kinds of people for whom achieving pregnancy is made easier, and often fail to imagine the possibility of trans parents. This failure of imagination is not rooted in biological fact, but rather in social logics that ought to be the site for transformations that expand access and shift provider attitudes. Discussion Trans parents are unexceptional in the sense that, even though they may experience relatively more concentrated forms of adversity, they share many reproductive capabilities and obstacles with cis parents. In light of that concentrated adversity and the epistemic insights it might generate, how might prospective trans parents engage with new reproductive technologies? How might these engagements render them moral pioneers called to make decisions about the sorts of people created using reproductive biotechnologies?