Pregnant man in difficulty getting social benefits

A pregnant man in Finland has met problems with the Finnish social security system, local media reported on Saturday.

The man was born as a woman, and started a sex correction process to stay with another man. The couple are in their 30s.

The couple wanted a baby and the man had interrupted his hormonal sex correction treatment before getting pregnant. But now he faces problems with the current legislation, which does not recognize his access to social security.

The legislation on parental child compensation in Finland has currently no option that the person giving birth is a man. The law on "maternity compensation" determines that the eligible person must be a woman who has been pregnant at least 154 days.

The future father told Lannen Media, a Finnish language news consortium, that the legislation should be amended. "It is the rights of the child that matter," he said. The pregnancy is now in its fourth month, so the men still have some time to the start of authorized public compensation.

Interviewed by Lannen Media on Saturday, the couple said the Finnish health care professionals have had no problem with them except that the administrative systems do not recognize a situation where a pregnant person has the male social security number.

Finland maintains a system of social security numbers where men and women have different codes.

American Thomas Beatie was reportedly in 2008 the first man in the world to give birth to a child. Since then there have been reports about men who had given births at least in Germany, Austria and Britain, according to the Lannen Media report.