This spring he gave birth to his first child

When the call came, my brother was at work in the open office in Cambridge, Mass., he shares with seven colleagues who, like him, help run clinical trials for a drug developer. The phone number came up blocked, so he knew it must be the doctor. He stood up, unsteady on his feet. Was he a little nauseous? Or was that just adrenaline? He ducked into the hallway in search of quiet.

My brother Evan, 35, is a stocky guy of medium height with a trimmed, fuzzy blond beard and two gem studs in each earlobe. He usually wears a Red Sox hat, and when he’s nervous, he’ll remove it and obsessively bend the rim. But on that September afternoon, both of his hands were clutching his phone, the right one cupping the left for privacy. “Hello?”

“This is Dr. Kowalik,” said the voice. The identification was unnecessary. Ania Kowalik is a reproductive endocrinologist at a clinic called Fertility Solutions in Dedham, Mass. They’d spoken regularly for more than six months. Evan, who was born female, had wanted to be a parent since he was very young, when he played with dolls just a bit longer than the other kids. He’d helped pay for college by nannying triplets. And when he first came out to friends as transgender at 19, changing his name and beginning his long physical transformation, he didn’t stop adding to the list of baby names in the back of his journal: Kaya, Eleanor, Huxley.

Evan knew he should feel excited. But instead, he felt a chill of anxiety and anticipation. He’d wanted this for so long, he later told me, and had been close to getting it. Then, four months earlier, he’d miscarried after Kowalik told him she couldn’t find a heartbeat during his first ultrasound.

She was brief: Evan was pregnant. Kowalik told him he had low levels of progesterone, a hormone that helps maintain a healthy pregnancy, and prescribed some pills for him to start taking right away. “Congratulations,” she said after a pause. “This is a good start.”

Evan isn’t sure how long he stood in the hallway after the call. People from other offices brushed by him, caught up in their work. He called his partner, and her gasp was loud enough that Evan held the phone away from his ear momentarily. He pulled up a calculator to figure out his due date.

I’d have no reason to tell you about this moment in my brother’s life were it not for the fact of his gender. Now that gay marriage is legal, the social battleground has shifted to new frontiers, frontiers that include the most private aspects of