Guest post: Out of place but possible
Originally a comment by Seanna Watson on Nope.
“Ectopic” technically just means “out of place” – in the case of a pregnancy that means it’s not in the uterus. The most common misplaced location is in the Fallopian tube, since that’s where eggs tend to be. (If untreated, tubal pregnancies are usually fatal to the mother.) But there is also the remote possibility of the egg being fertilized while floating free in the abdomen, and implanting in some random location. Bodies are indeed weird, and the development of the parasitic organism (aka embryo) apparently does not actually require the uterus – it can make its own placenta attached anywhere as long as it can find sufficient connection to do blood exchange. Unsurprisingly, the rates of complications for this are very high for both mother and baby. The delivery has to be surgical, and the attachment site of the placenta is extremely susceptible to hemorrhage (the post-delivery contraction of the uterus (usually) does the job of preventing this in normal pregnancies.
All of which is to say that yes, it does seem that it would be technically possible to develop a way to get a fertilized egg to implant in the abdomen of a transwoman, albeit at significant risk for both the pregnancy and the host.
My concern if that were the case, would be the protection of both the host and the fetus from the effects of the immune system on finding a gamete, blastomere, fetus, or at any other stage, a parasite in his body. To guard against that, a massive periodic dose of anti-rejection drugs would need to be administered. I don’t see how the placental transfers would take place. How would the fetus be sheltered from all of the hormones rushing their way here and there about the body? A male body does not have an evolved endocrine system to provide for and protect either the man or the fetus in the same way that a woman’s body is the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution since the invention of sex.
This whole concept should be left to the realms of science fiction’s “what if” genre. Or, comedy, Junior.
My dog was done in by her immune system mistaking her red blood cells for a virus. That’s a simple thing. A wrong sex pregnancy? Forget about it.
It’s a terrible idea, but I was claiming it’s physically impossible. It’s interesting to learn that it may not be. But yeah, as a project it’s horrific. Grotesque waste of resources just for a start.
Poor RoZie. So unfair.
@Ophelia: Thanks for the GP. Indeed it is a horrific idea, and waste of resources. It’s not like we have a shortage of humans on the planet.
@Mike: It’s my understanding that the placenta itself (which is really part of the “pregnancy system”, not part of the mother) does most of the work of immunosuppression as well as providing a bit of a barrier against too much antigenic transfer. But as you point out, the female bodies of placental mammals have had a lot of years to evolve adaptations to make this work. And of course, it only has to work sufficiently well for enough progeny and parents to survive.
Condolences on the loss of RoZie. The immune system is a kluge that barely works, and too often fails so tragically.
I’m skeptical that a male could carry a fetus to term at all. Ectopic pregnancies in women are still in women. Male and female hormone systems, and even the basic composition of their blood, are fundamentally different to each other. I know very little about the biology of pregnancy, but I don’t have to know much to know that hormones, bloodstream, metabolism, even antibodies… pretty much every system of the female body plays some kind of role throughout gestation. I just can’t see an embryo, even one inside a uterus, plopped into a male body somehow coming out remotely okay, because I’m highly skeptical that male bodies have evolved to have these same kinds of complex reactions to a fetus showing up inside them. It’s just nuts.
This stuff jumps readily to mind, because I’ve been reading a lot about the biology of homosexuality, which is a good example of the sensitive nature of the interaction between mother and embryo/fetus. Same-sex preference in humans is caused in part by subtle shifts in hormone exposure in the early stages of gestation, which can be influenced by antibodies present in women. (E.g., the famous “birth order effect”, in which each subsequent male fetus pregnancy is more likely to become a homosexual in adulthood, because of subtle changes in the immune system of the mother.) It’s all a very elaborate and finely calibrated physical process, and the whole of a woman takes part in the creation of a child inside her. The idea that we should just assume men can probably do this, too, based on nothing but their desire to be able to, is even more bonkers than allowing men in women’s sports.
There really is no bottom to the craziness of gender identity ideology.
Imagine what Mary Shelley could have done with these atrocious ideas. It boggles the mind.
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Thanks to both of you, Seanna and Ophelia. Working on a design for my RoZie tattoo.
#1 “This whole concept should be left to the realms of science fiction’s “what if” genre.”
A somewhat less implausible idea is an artificial womb so gestation occurs entirely outside any human body. Lois McMaster Bujold includes such a thing being common in some of her SF, with both beneficial and harmful uses explored.