I have profoundly mixed feelings reading this. On the one hand, it’s great that Cole will be able to biologically reproduce someday. On the other, it’s further cementing and normalizing the idea that medicalization is the answer for so many girls and teens who are trying to escape being female.
I’d only wish the best for Cole, and totally understand this decision. But…
I do have to quibble with some of the morphology (in both the linguistic and biological sense), such as the reference to “his” eggs and being “a father” someday. Biological facts are stubborn things: Ovaries are not and cannot be part of a male’s anatomy, and regardless of one’s preferred pronouns or subjective identity, the reality is that Cole will be the mother (not the father) of any future offspring.
When 18-year-old Cole Carman made the decision to transition from female to male late last year, the San Francisco-area teen knew that he would be in for major surgery and hormone therapy.
That didn’t stop Carman, a recent high school grad set to start college in the fall, from signing on for another potentially risky medical procedure: egg retrieval. It’s a fairly routine (yet still major) surgery, typically undertaken by egg donors and some women undergoing in-vitro fertilization.
But Carman may be the first transgender teen to have his eggs successfully harvested before transitioning — preserving his ability to have children that he’ll be biologically related to, whether he chooses to carry a child himself or turn to a surrogate. “I’ve always known I wanted to have kids of my own, so when my endocrinologist talked to me about it, it was a no-brainer,” Carman told Yahoo Parenting.
The surgery, which was done at the end of May, wasn’t so simple. It required 10 days of hormone shots, and it left him dealing with side effects like bloating and cramping. During the procedure, a doctor used a needle to harvest as many egg follicles as possible, freezing them so they can be thawed and fertilized at some point in the future.
What makes Carman’s situation so groundbreaking is that up until recently, doctors didn’t routinely talk about fertility preservation to transgender teens or adults who were planning to transition.
