Follow on thread III - Feeling sad and weary that feminists and trans-women are constantly pitted against one another.

Datun - welcome!

I should point out that the Act is referring, basically, to who is eligible to have ova implanted and whose sperm is eligible to fertilise said ova. Not about the uterus that might house fertilised ova.

It is explicitly saying that only FEMALE people can be implanted with ova. And it is specific about that because the Act was passed after the GRA of 2004 so there was a reason to be.

Medical ethics about tissue with life potential are highly developed.

As the law currently stands, it would not be illegal to transplant a uterus into a male. But it would be illegal to implant that uterus with donated embryos. And changing the law to accommodate AGP desires is going to hit a lot more stumbling blocks than obliterating women's rights. Nobody gives a stuff about women but everybody gives a stuff about bioengineered babies.

If we are planning to implant fertilised embryos into these donor uteri then we come up against another problem - rejection.

One of the things women's bodies do is reject sub-perfect embryos because from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes perfect sense. A human female is only going to be pregnant a few times, so it makes sense for each time to have the best possible chance to produce live young. Part of the mechanism for checking this is the normal feedback loop between mother's brain and the placenta, but another major part is the immune system.

It's simply not possible for the same feedback loop to be present in male bodies for the reasons I and others have outlined above, and as for the immune system backing it up, they will be on powerful immune suppressants in order to stop them rejecting the transplanted womb.

Can anyone honestly see these people, who want this purely to validate their "femininity" being happy with a baby who will potentially be disabled? How will that fit into their mind's eye view of the perfect family? We've already seen what happens to babies born to surrogates who aren't 100% perfect, how will this be any different?

Ahh, thanks LangCleg.

I knew I'd seen it and spent a fruitless 10 minutes trawling all the places I'm on.

Losing track is way too easy these days.

What I mean is that the way things are going transwomen insist they are girls from birth, and it seems society is about to accept that is true.

Thus using the words "from birth" in the Act is as meaningless as the words man or woman.

The same presumably applies to other laws using the now-meaningless word "woman".

There we have yet another reason to determinedly hang on to the correct meanings for words - if the meaning of "man", "woman", "male" and "female" change, does the meaning of the act automatically change?

From LangCleg's tweet, it refers to "woman and man include respectively a "girl" and "boy" (from birth)" - but if transwomen are women, are they also biological women, and "women from birth"?

Datun

The excerpt from the Act is in a reply to the tweet I posted at 11.57.

QuentinSummers

Well, are we talking transplanting a uterus AND egg-producing ovaries? Which seems unlikely. Unfortunately for men with an AGP desire to be pregnant, they will need to rewrite the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. This one will be a bridge too far for them, I think. Nobody gives a shit about women's rights, as we are finding out, but a lot of people react in horror to this kind of stuff.

Yes but that assumes the man wants the baby more than the experience of being pregnant. I'm not sure if that's the case for a lot of these people.

I guess if TIMs could get pregnant it might mean things like morning sickness, SPD, facial pigmentation, constipation and piles all got taken more seriously

Indeed Langcleg. More money in an artificial womb outside the body than putting one into a man. You can't be sued for medical negligence to the man either.

I happened to come across a post that said implanting a womb into a man is illegal. The wording was very specific as it said 'male from birth'.

But now I can't find it. So I've had to google myself.

In the UK, assisting a male to become pregnant does not fall within the specified activities for which a licence can be granted to a fertility clinic when “bringing about the creation of embryos in vitro” under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. Therefore, implantation of an IVF embryo in order to assist a man to experience pregnancy, in the absence of a licence, would be liable to imprisonment or a fine upon conviction.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/medical-law-expert-on-womb-transplants-unisex-pregnancy-and-the-right-to-gestate-80581

It does rather raise the other question of whether a woman who is legally a man is entitled to any kind of assistance in getting pregnant, though.

we'll be so far along we won't be transplanting anyway, but just telling a body to grow its own

Yes. Either that, or we will have figured out how to gestate a foetus outside the womb, in which case that is what we'll do because why implant into the hostile environment of a male body if you don't have to?

menthol exactly

I remember my dad moving our water tank down from the loft, to the bathroom, and the associated swearing, building, pipesoldering etc. that was involved in creating somewhere in the downstairs bathroom strong enough to support the tank, and redirect all the flows to where they now needed to be.

It seems to me that was one hell of a job, but nothing compared to creating the scaffolding and blood supply that a womb in a body not made to accommodate a womb will be, and yes, then to provide all the right hormones and nutrients artificially at the right times has got to be challenging (to say the very least), whilst not having the uterus rejected - It's an insane idea.

Perhaps once they've figured out how to 3d print organs that match your own, and of course then understand DNA enough to flick the switches so that they can persuade male DNA to grow a uterus... by which point it seems to me we'll be so far along we won't be transplanting anyway, but just telling a body to grow its own.

I don't think womb transplants for men will happen in my lifetime, if at all. It's early days even for bio women.

It's not just about the blood supply (which is complex) but also, as others have pointed out, the delicate balance of hormones necessary to maintain a pregnancy. Just keeping the endometrium to a suitable thickness is going to be a nightmare.

Added to that I'm presuming drugs will be needed to stop rejection. And we don't even know how that will play out in a female let alone a man.

I could waffle on all night. Truth is, I haven't worked in gynae for years so if anyone wants to correct me please do. But I don't think it is possible for blokes.

To truly understand and replicate pregnancy in men, huge amounts of research to study pregnancy in women would need to be done.

Now, maybe this would provide the source of funding for that type of research which is currently considered a low priority and not worth which might suddenly appear because its now men pursuing it.

I do think in time that the science will be developed because its a holy grail for a scientist but when that happens is related to demand and money behind it.

But that still comes back to the point that why would anyone want to put their body through that much trauma if they didn't have to? Maybe for the kudos of being 'the first' as some sort of trophy. But the fact it will always require heavy duty medical intervention makes it much more attractive to get someone else to do it for you, but to change the language around how you are somehow pregnant if someone else is doing it for you (watch out for pseudo science of surrogates having bonds to their carrier and having symptoms in sympathy).

For the money to follow, there has to be a power and a status attached to being pregnant that there currently isn't, for it to become widespread and to initiate the science needed.

And even if the ability to become pregnant is developed, it still will rely on the harvesting of eggs from somewhere. They won't just magically appear from nowhere. The technology to self clone or man made eggs, is much further into the future than the 'transwomen can be pregnant' crowd are suggesting.

If its about control of the production of children, then there is another more sinister source of money that could come into play of course. If that is, indeed the case, then this is very much also about the control of women and not merely about men believing they are women and having the best interests of women at heart. There is a rotten selfishness at its core, with little regard for others.

Really if we were going to pour a load of money into futuristic medical treatment surely it would be better to focus on something that would benefit the many (like dementia cures maybe?) Than a few males with no physical condition to cure.

Indeed.

Well we could start with curing female infertility if it's all so easy to manage the hormones etc. But since doctors and the medical establishment frequently dismiss the health problems of women, I won't hold my breath.

Also indeed.

So many things that would benefit a lot more people that funding could be spent on, than trying to recreate an entirely female biological process in male people.

So he wasn't a man. More Kool-Aid swallowing.

Yeah I have seen a load of 'pregnant man' stories. Always, the 'man' is actually a female person. No man will ever be pregnant and give birth. Womb transplants may well be possible, but into female people. the male body just is not designed to give birth and carry a child.

So many seemingly intelligent people on my FB friends list fall for this 'pregnant man' bollocks. Its embarrassing really. They are all like 'omg, science has come on so much!'. So everytime, I point out its a female person and then they are a bit and the amazement turns into 'well female people get pregnant all the time, why is this newsworthy just because the person dresses 'as a man' and has facial hair'

I read it as frustrated sarcasm erish. It's exactly what I think too

It's batshit

It totally is.

That wasn't directed at you Quentin, just the people who think it's a simple matter, when as you say, no one really knows what causes female infertility in many women.

Well we could start with curing female infertility if it's all so easy to manage the hormones etc. But since doctors and the medical establishment frequently dismiss the health problems of women, I won't hold my breath.

I think the interplay and feedback between placental and maternal hormones will be the hardest to replicate synthetically. I am not medical, but given that hormone issues can cause miscarriage and that no-one really even knows what triggers labour I can't see how this could be done in a male.
In a female it's literally an organ transplant, all the hormones/musculoskeletal stuff is already in place.
Really if we were going to pour a load of money into futuristic medical treatment surely it would be better to focus on something that would benefit the many (like dementia cures maybe?) Than a few males with no physical condition to cure.
It's batshit

It is not just bones that the female body has that equips us for gestating a baby; it is everything. Which is the very foundation of why we are discriminated against from birth. No matter what we wear or how we present.

Also, apparently illegal under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008:

twitter.com/ThatBloodyWasp/status/946814094111330304

See the reply to this tweet quoting the relevant text from the Act, which specifies the definition of man and woman as "from birth".

Oops, I meant male pubic arch, not sacral bones.

I am not claiming that any of this is easy or will happen overnight, but I think it's naive to think it could never happen. And, even if it never succeeds, it's infuriating that millions of dollars and millions of research hours that could have been used for good will be wasted in the attempt.

I wouldn't categorically state that male pregnancy is impossible, but I do think it's unlikely, if for no other reason than the male pelvis is not equipped to accommodate an expanding uterus. The pelvis is the most sexually dimorphic part of the human skeleton: that's why archaeologists need one in order to definitively identify the sex of human remains (absent DNA). (And just on PolarBear's comment, female rib cages are also angled differently to male ones, to accomodate the displacement of internal organs during pregnancy). Given the narrow male pelvic inlet and the angle of male sacral bones, I would imagine that third trimester gestation in a male body would not be an option, which means that the baby would need to be delivered very prematurely, a deeply unethical outcome to plan for, obviously.

That said, I agree that nothing is going to stop some men from trying to do this. Envy of the female procreative ability is embedded in the male psyche, as evidenced by many creation myths (think Eve being created from Adam's rib, or Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus - these are both patriarchal reversals of the actual human condition, in which women create men with their bodies). There is zero medical reason to facilitate male pregnancies, of course, so the SOLE reason for doing this would be so that men could lay claim - in actuality, this time, not in myth - to the female procreative power.

Speaking of which, it's grimly amusing that trans-identified males are fantasising that having uteruses will make them 'real women' while at the same time demanding that women be forbidden from linking wombs with womanhood in any way. They aren't even trying to disguise the fact that the only reason they want to undergo pregnancy is because they see it as the ultimate 'trophy' of femaleness - it has zero to do with actually wanting a child to love and care for.