A nurse cares for Nourhanne Ahmed, a premature baby girl, inside an incubator
IN PHOTO: A nurse cares for Nourhanne Ahmed, a premature baby girl, inside an incubator at a public hospital in the province of Sharkia, northeast of Cairo, June 10,2008. The Egyptian Health Ministry has complained over the lack of sufficient funds for public hospitals. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri (EGYPT)

About 54 men had reportedly given birth in Australia in 2013. Medicare has recently released figures about the growing number of transsexual men giving birth since the first birth to American transsexual Thomas Beatie in 2007

MailOnline had reported the first successful transsexual birth in 2007, but it was only recently that Australia's Medicare had allowed people to choose their own gender in official records instead of forcing them to indicate the sex they were born with. The change in Medicare policy revealed an emerging trend of transgender men who have chosen to keep their female reproductive organs to make it possible for them to give birth later on in life.

Transgender men in the U.S. followed Beatie who remained biologically female before his transition into a male. He went on to give birth to two more children in the last seven years. The practice of men giving birth to children has reached Australia. Out of the 54 transgender men who gave birth in Australia, 22 of them live in Western Australia while 16 are in New South Wales. Other cases of transgender men having babies came from Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.

Medicare said 50 percent of the men were aged between 24 and 36. One transgender man aged between 55 to 64 years also gave birth. According to the Australian Health Department, it is aware of cases of patients giving birth who identified themselves as male and receiving pregnancy-related care under Medicare.

Transgender Victoria spokesperson Sally Goldman said people should be allowed to be true to themselves in terms of gender expressions and identity. When asked if the growing trend will be popular for long, she said it will as she believes transgenders have "a right for life."

The Medicare report also revealed that a number of transsexual men had access to abortion procedures in 2013 but the exact numbers remain unclear since the information is placed under the dilatation and curettage, which is a surgical procedure that involves doctors removing part of the cervical lining.

In 2012, a British "male mother" gave birth via caesarean section. The man whose identity remains unknown was believed to be in his 30s. It was previously reported as the first British transgender male who gave birth to a baby. However, Campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics has slammed the idea of transsexuals giving birth and said it is a "distortion of biology" as human biology demands for a man and a woman to produce a child.