Babies with no biological mother - breakthrough for male same-sex couples, or further erasure of women?

[usernamealreadytaken]

I just read what I think is a very scary article regarding the process of mitomeiosis, where skin cells can be used to create an "egg" which can be fertilised by sperm. The skin can come from a man or woman, which enables the person to have a genetic relationship to a baby, where they have no egg. I can totally see the benefits for women who have no eggs, or are infertile due to medical issues such as cancer treatment, but am I the only one who fears this is just another way for male same-sex couples to have children, and the only need for a woman in the process will be to carry the pregnancy?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/30/babies-could-be-born-without-mothers/#:~:text=Babies%20could%20be%20born%20without%20a%20biological%20mother%20after%20scientists,sex%20cell%20ready%20for%20fertilisation.

This is literally to cure infertility.

A woman who cannot produce eggs could use this process. Women made infertile from cancer treatment could use this.

Precisely.

This still requires one woman to donate the eggs and another one to carry the baby.

This has the potential to benefit women more than men because it means they are far less limited by age now. Egg quality and reserve deterioration would no longer be a problem, we can just make new ones.

All the women on here who can’t conceive or have IVF due to DOR, boom problem solved!

Im sure a Chinese company are attempting to to build artificial wombs.

I believe Dr. Ian Malcolm said something similar. And we all know how that turned out...

That'll surely come. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will. Maybe there'll come a time when pregnancy will be just for the poor; rich women will use an artificial womb.

ETA: spelling

Well it’s better than having womrn as human incubators

I don't see this as erasure of women any more than the ability to make a baby from two eggs was the erasure of men.

This.

It's one thing a baby not having a mother due to bad circumstances, but to actually set out to deprive a baby of their mother, by design, feels evil to me. In general, no one will ever love you like your mother loves you.

The problem is that humans have so far have a pretty poor track record at synthetically reproducing nature

This is it. Zealous scientists keep thinking they've replicated something exactly and then decades later find they didn't even know what they didn't know.

For example, when formula was invented, mothers were told it was better than breastmilk. But then they are still finding out all the time, subtle ways that breastmilk has useful stuff in it we didn't even know was there, and can't replicate.

Not least because breastmilk from one mother changes everyday, based on temperature, infection, even mood.

Another example is honey. There's all sorts of interesting compounds in honey that we haven't sequenced yet. And again honeybees will put different stuff in it depending on the weather or local threats etc.

If they can't make formula to be exactly the same as breastmilk, what hope have they of making artificial amniotic fluid that's exactly the same? Especially as it changes daily, based on other stuff going on?

It's hubris, thinking you can replicate this kind of thing. It's not Medicine like a hip replacement or a hearing aid. It's actual new life.

It is an interesting question though.

If we were able to reproduce entirely artificially, no need for women to grow and ripen eggs, no need for men to produce sperm, no need for a woman's womb, how would we think about sex?

Would we introduce something into the process to randomly select sex (OMG actually assigning sex 😂) or would parents choose sex? Would we even have parents as we think of them?

And if sex were by choice, what would the choice be made on?

I might be getting this wrong, but one of the things that irritated me most about the reporting, regardless of the ethical questions involved, was the way the reporter kept referring to this as a game changing miracle for "same sex couples". The last time I looked at least half of those same sex couples were female, and until they can make an egg into sperm surely this technique can't be utilised for lesbian couples? Am I missing something or is this just the usual erasure of half of the human race?

What do you think about IVG for lesbian couples? They're also working on that

They're also working on IVG for lesbian couples to do the same.

I agree with your unease: but isn't this a bit hard on fathers? Do you really think they generally don't love their kids as much?

I agree...on formula,,it's good it's there and women shouldn't feel not breastfeeding is the end of the world. But breastmilk is still very important if it can be used.

The mothers and fathers will be the people who raise the child. If there is genuinely no biological mother I see no problem with being raised by two fathers.

The only time I have a problem is when there is a surrogate biological mother completely out of the picture. I think the child then misses out on that relationship.

There will have to be a biological mother. We are nowhere near being able to gestate a foetus in anything other than a living woman's womb.

Kickstarting the bundle of cells is the relatively easy bit. You still ain't going to get from that to a baby without a woman.

However, you can bet every coin in your bank account that when that baby is born, the headlines are all about the amazng breakthrough of the bundle of cells, while the vital and irreplaceable role played by a woman to achieve anything that could be considered a success is just taken for granted.

I did see something the other day about growing lambs in plastic bags of some sort of fluid, but was too icked out by it to register where I read it. I couldn't get my head round it so didn't read to the end and couldn't find it again to see if it segwayed into humans.

There will have to be a biological mother. We are nowhere near being able to gestate a foetus in anything other than a living woman's womb.

Yes but they still wouldn't necessarily be the biological mother.

The biological mother would be the woman that supplied the egg regardless of who carries the embryo to full gestation.

If there is no egg at all, then there is no biological mother at all.

You said "surrogate biological mother" though. A surrogate mother is not the woman who provides the egg, it's the woman who carries the child.

Redefining ‘biological mother’ to mean only genetic mother, for example an egg donator, is erasing mothers.

A woman who uses an egg donator but gestates the child herself and raises it is the child’s mother. Not genetic mother, but mother in every other and more important sense, and certainly ‘biologically’.

Good point. Perhaps we should start talking about "genetic mother" and "gestational mother" to keep the women who play these roles visible as reproduction becomes more industrialised. Otherwise the fact that real human women are still required by the "machine" may be glossed over and devalued.

Why would you force a child to never have a mother.

That's not parenting, it's quite the opposite. It's just selfish and cruel.

A woman who uses an egg donator but gestates the child herself and raises it is the child’s mother.

I'm pretty sure, in the UK, legally as well, including if the pregnancy is part of a surrogacy arrangement.

They are definitely looking into making sperm from skin cells as well as eggs. The technology is not exactly the same as that used in the study that generated these latest articles, though, which was about putting genetic material into a donated egg that had had its genetic material removed. In the articles I've read that mention sperm, they are talking about creating stem cells from skin cells and then coaxing those stem cells into becoming eggs or sperm.

What I find really interesting is that while most headlines seem to focus on the advances in creating eggs, I remember reading one article that mentioned how much easier it is to create sperm, they are just a bag of DNA after all, way less complicated. So theoretically, they may perfect the technology to create sperm much sooner, meaning women could soon be able to easily reproduce without men. Just need a quick skin swab from your bestie, a couple of trips to the corner lab, and a turkey baster (or if you're fancy, artificial insemination in a doctor's office 😜). And all our offspring would be girls, because we only have X chromosomes in our cells. All-female colony anyone? Would we miss men? Only kidding. Sort of. 😁

What's actually terrifying, and I've never seen it addressed in any article I've read on this subject, is the door this could open for people to steal other people's gametes and have their babies without them knowing. Taylor Swift fan? All you'd need to do is find an old coffee cup she threw away and you could have her baby! This would apply to men too, because you'd be able to make sperm from a dude's skin cells just as easily. Famous people are going to have to worry about a lot more than the paparazzi if this technology becomes commonplace. We all are. We're used to our gametes being rather difficult to access, giving us full control over who we let near them. But when every cell on our body can be turned into a gamete, that control goes away completely. Scary world we live in.