Does a video at a hospital show a transgender man being handed and then holding his surrogate baby? No, that's not true: The man in the video, Joseph Hughes, identifies as gay but not transgender. The video shows Hughes with his newborn baby at the hospital. He is a father to twins, born via in vitro fertilization and surrogacy.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on May 8, 2024. The post included a short video. Its caption read:
Transgender man lies in a hospital bed as his newborn baby is handed to him after he paid a surrogate to have a baby for him. Do you agree or disagree with surrogacy?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of the writing of this fact check:
The man in the video is Joseph Hughes, co-owner of Ryan Wayne Salon, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. He posted the video (archived here) on Instagram on May 7, 2024.
Hughes identifies as gay but not transgender. He co-owns Ryan Wayne with his husband, Nathan Hughes. They recently welcomed twins, born via IVF and surrogacy.
The Hugheses have spoken openly about the process of building their family. A friend donated her eggs to the couple and Joseph Hughes' sister carried the twins. Before their birth, he talked to the video platform Truly about what scared him about becoming a parent. Hughes told Truly at the 5:34 mark:
The thing that stresses me out the most about being a parent is just the amount of hate in the world. I cannot begin to express how disturbing it is that people feel the need to express their opinions of my life and my family when it has nothing to do with them and their life and their family.
You can watch Truly's full segment on the couple here (archived here).
Other fact checks of claims related to transgender identity can be found here.
