Hermann J. Knippertz / AP file

Thomas Beatie, better known as the "pregnant man," has separated from his wife. The couple has three children together.

Thomas Beatie, the transgendered man who first made headlines back in 2008 when he became pregnant and gave birth to a healthy daughter, has separated from his wife of nine years, People magazine is reporting.

Beatie, who has three children with his wife, Nancy, announced the news of the separation while taping an interview on the TV show "The Doctors." 

"Like all marriages, we have our ups and downs, and we’re going through a rough patch right now. At the moment, we’re separated." 

Also during that interview, Beatie revealed he'd had the final female-to-male gender reassignment surgery. The syndicated show will air Monday, May 7. 

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'Pregnant man' gives birth to daughter

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The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year.

It’s hard to imagine we still have to tell employers this today, but here goes: Pregnancy discrimination is illegal.

While it may sound obvious to some, blatant pregnancy bias is still alive and well in the workplace. A pregnant woman who applied for a job at a Subway franchise in Phoenix was told by a manager “we can’t hire you because you’re pregnant.” Last month, she won punitive damages against the employer.

It’s just one example of the types of flagrant pregnancy discrimination that the federal government is trying to stop.

“A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's general counsel, said during a public meeting before the EEOC commissioners Wednesday.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC.

While the EEOC is doing outreach to employers so they understand the law, the agency is also using the big-stick approach.

The EEOC has increased the number of cases it has filed against employers when it comes to pregnancy bias, Lopez said, reaching 20 cases last year, inching up from 19 in 2010.

He pointed to a $1.64 million settlement reached with Akal Security Inc., the largest provider of contract security services to the federal government, in 2010. The agency claimed Akal had a national policy “of forcing its pregnant employees, working as contract security guards on U.S. Army bases, to take leave and discharging them because of pregnancy.”

Such conduct, the agency maintained, violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which prohibits gender discrimination in employment, including pregnancy discrimination.

This type of bias can hit low-wage workingwomen the hardest, said Sharon Terman, senior staff attorney in the gender equity program at The Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, who spoke at the EEOC event.

“We’ve heard from many women who were fired immediately upon announcing their pregnancy and whose employers explicitly told them the pregnancy was the reason,” she explained.

Low-income women who become pregnant, she continued, are routinely denied minor workplace accommodations that would help them continue working. A common example of accommodations would be allowing a worker to sit on a stool instead of standing all day, or letting her carry a water bottle.

She offered one case of a pregnant janitor who was fired via text message by her boss after she told him her obstetrician was late for her appointment.

Many poorer workers also don’t have paid sick days, she pointed out. The United States is one of the only industrialized nations that does not mandate paid sick days for employees. While some states have passed laws requiring some paid sick time, the majority of workers nationally are not covered by such legislation.

Although many employers have anti-discrimination policies, it still occurs. Employment attorney Sara Begley said, “Unenlightened managers who are simply focused on getting the job done may violate a pregnant employee's protected rights by taking adverse action for taking maternity leave, not provide salary increases or bonuses to employees on leave, assume an employee will not return post leave and transfer her duties to another employee, assume an employee will be on Mommy Track post maternity leave."

Such outdated assumptions, she added, “can and must be remedied by training and enforcement of applicable policies."

The biggest “knowledge gap” when it comes to the law, she added, appears to be with smaller firms who just don’t have adequate training.  

While reaching out and educating employers is important, said EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, he shared his frustration that so little has changed in the 35 years since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

“Why have we missed the boat?” he asked the panelists assembled at the hearing. Why, he added, does pregnancy bias persist? “It’s a puzzle to me.”

Judy Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families, who spoke at the hearing, said it was all about long-standing stereotypes, and not just regarding pregnancy but for caregiving too. Our society doesn’t value people with family responsibilities, she said. “What are our real obligations to change an engrained paradigm?” 

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Doctors have long assumed that Cesarean sections might be the best choice for babies that will be born preterm.

But a new study shows that C-sections are no safer than vaginal delivery for the most fragile of infants, those who are born early and who are small for their age. In fact, C-sections might actually lead to a greater risk of respiratory problems and other complications in these infants, according to a report presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

The new results suggest that doctors need to re-think how they look at C-sections, said the study’s lead author Dr. Erika Werner, an assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. 

“You shouldn’t assume there’s no downside to the baby with a C-section,” Werner said.

This kind of information becomes increasingly important as Cesarean deliveries become more and more common.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that C-section rates rose 33 percent from 2000 to 2007, with women under the age of 25 experiencing the greatest increase at 57 percent.

“The rates of C-section are going up in this country,” said Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor. “One reason may be in vitro fertilization and multiple births. One part of it, though is women trying to put delivery on their own schedules. And, you’ve heard this before: ‘too posh to push.’”

The most recent data – from 2009 – show that 45.6 percent of premature babies were delivered by Cesarean section, as compared to 35.1 percent of those born at 37-38 weeks.

Part of the explanation for the especially high rate among preemies may lie in the assumption that vaginal births might be too traumatic – and dangerous - for fragile infants who are underweight and preterm, said Dr. Diane Ashton, deputy director at the national office of the March of Dimes.

“When I was in my obstetric residency training in the late '80s, we were taught that it would be protective to do Cesarean deliveries on preterm babies because vaginal birth might put them at risk for internal hemorrhages and other complications,” Ashton said.

The push for C-sections was especially strong when it came to infants who weren’t growing fast enough in the uterus, Snyderman told TODAY’S Ann Curry Thursday.  “The conventional wisdom has been to get those babies out and we’ll treat them in an ICU,” Snyderman said.

For the new study, Werner and her colleagues scrutinized the medical records of 2,560 babies born preterm between 1995 and 2003 in New York City. More than half -- 54 percent -- of the babies had been delivered through Cesarean section

Babies born vaginally were no more likely to have developed subdural hemorrhages, seizures, or sepsis than those delivered by C-section. Instead, the researchers found that babies born by C-section were 30 percent more likely to develop respiratory distress syndrome.  And this may have long term fallout for the babies, Snyderman said.

“The breathing problems can turn into asthma later in life,” she explained. “In the last few weeks of pregnancy, that’s when the lungs and the brain are developing. So developmental problems, cerebral palsy, learning disability – all those things become compounded if a baby is taken out prematurely.”

One thing the researchers don’t know is why doctors chose to deliver the babies in the study via C-section. It’s possible, Werner allowed, that in some cases C-sections were chosen to speed delivery because the baby’s or the mother’s lives were at risk.

But in cases where there is no imminent danger to the baby or the mom, doctors should lean towards vaginal delivery, both Werner and Ashton said.

And that’s probably true for full-term babies too, Werner said.

“I think there’s a chance that full term infants might also have lower rates of respiratory distress,” Werner said. “That’s speculation at this point. But it’s another reason for doctors to think a lot about the benefits of vaginal delivery.”

Syderman agreed.

“When you start to look at 37 maybe 38 weeks, there’s an increased belief now that the longer a baby stays in the womb, up to 40 weeks, the better the outcome is for the baby,” she said.There are women who want a C-section to avoid labor pain, Snyderman said.

”They say ‘I don’t want the pain, please let me just do a C-section,’” she added.  “You have to remember the ultimate outcome should be a healthy baby.”

Related: 

• Too posh to push? C-sections rise with social status
• C-section rates hit all-time high
• C-section rates around globe at 'epidemic' levels