Mr. Mom

Wednesday, 03.26.08

Photo by Flickr User Gaetan Lee under a creative commons license

The varieties of reproductive experience

August 2, 2005

Sage Stossel looks back over fifty years of Atlantic writings on cloning, fertilization, egg donation, and sperm donation.

An Oregon man (recognized as male, anyway, by the law, his friends, and his wife) is pregnant.

More arresting than Thomas Beatie's words, published in The Advocate this month, are the photos of his stubbly face and swollen belly, now in its second trimester. Transexualism is documented and usually accepted, more or less, in many cultures; consider the waria in Indonesia, the mustarjil in Iraq, the mahu in Tahiti, the katoy on Soi Cowboy. But cases like these will challenge even the sensibilities that have gotten used to the occasional mismatch between anatomy and gender. It's one thing for a man to wear a dress, and another for him to wear a maternity dress.

A prediction: within ten years, a biological male will give birth. Princeton biologist Lee Silver, an advocate for aggressive research in reproductive technology, has written about how simple such a pregnancy would be. Just pump a man full of female hormones (the right ones at the right times) and place a fertilized egg on a richly vasculated surface inside his gut. Voila -- the man will have a peritoneal pregnancy, and the fetus will be ripe for a c-section in nine months. Occasionally zygotes implant like this naturally in women; they spill out of the women's reproductive tracts and stick to the walls of their abdomens.

There are risks to parent and child alike. Peritoneal pregnancies often kill women who have them. And there's no easy way to be sure whether the cocktail of hormones served to male-mothers would be right, or safe for the baby. Bioethical concerns, in other words, will and should hold back male pregnancies at least a little longer. But if legally male transexuals are already becoming moms -- fairly uncontroversially -- using old female plumbing, then once we figure out the right hormonal recipe, the decision to let a man bear a child using his original parts will have essentially already been made.

— Graeme Wood

Husband and mother

Transgender husband Thomas Beatie narrates the story of his pregnancy in a groundbreaking article for The Advocate.

A fatal experiment

Many scientists think pregnancy in a male would cause unacceptable health risks for the man and child, reports Meryl Rothstein.

True fairness

Lori Andrews, visiting professor of public policy at Princeton, argues that the procedures would become safer with more research, and that male pregnancy would further gender equality.

A common hope

Jen Graves describes her journey toward trying to get her boyfriend pregnant.

Filed Under: bioethics, gender, health, medicine, science

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When I saw the Atlantic Monthly with the Britney Spears picture come through the door, I could barely touch it.

It telegrammed a death, like the Saturday Evening Post, though, to be sure, there were still tidal pools of poetry.

But the ebbing tide with piped effluent was flowing fast, and the red tide matched red-rashed faces preserved by the paparazzi.

Posted by Vinnie | March 26, 2008 9:57 AM