Fernando was 22 years old and 4 months pregnant.
This was no ordinary case: he is a transmasculine man, and his wife, Diane Rodríguez, 33, is a transfeminine woman. They met on social media two years earlier, both activists in the LGBT community in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and of Venezuelan origin. When they announced that they were expecting a child through natural methods, they became the first transgender couple in Latin America to make it public.
The news divided the continent. Social media was flooded with messages questioning the decision and calling it irresponsible, while others celebrated it as an act of courage. Ecuador’s Catholic Church, faced with the controversy, chose silence.