Question About Being Pregnant

Male pregnancy refers to the incubation of one or more embryos or fetuses by the male of any species. All pregnancies in the animal kingdom, besides seahorses, whose males carry the young until birth, are carried by female organisms. In all heterogamous species, the males produce the spermatozoa and rarely, if ever, host the zygote (the pipefish and seahorse are notable exceptions).

The seahorse and related species

Main articles: Syngnathidae and Seahorse

The Syngnathidae family of fish has the unique characteristic where females lay their eggs in a brood pouch on the male's chest, and the male incubates the eggs. Fertilization may take place in the pouch or before implantation in the water. Included in Syngnathidae are seahorses, the pipefish, and the weedy and leafy sea dragons. Syngnathidae is the only family in the animal kingdom to which the term "male pregnancy" has been applied.

Self-identified male transgender pregnancy

Some trans men (female-to-male transgender people) who interrupt hormone treatments can become pregnant, while still identifying and living as men. This is possible for individuals who still have functioning ovaries. Although these individuals are biologically female, from the standpoint of gender identity they are pregnant "transgender men".

For example, Matt Rice, a transgender man, bore a child in 1999 by artificial insemination during his relationship with writer Patrick Califia.

Thomas Beatie, another transgender man, chose to become pregnant because his wife was infertile; he wrote an article about the experience in The Advocate . The Washington Post further broadened the story on March 25 when blogger Emil Steiner called Beatie the first "legally" pregnant man on record, in reference to the state of Oregon recognizing Beatie as a man. He gave birth to a girl on June 29, 2008. Barbara Walters announced Beatie's second pregnancy on The View , and he gave birth to a boy on June 9, 2009..Beatie is expecting a third baby in 2010. Previously the couple told Barbara Walters that they ordered sperm and used a standard turkey baster at home to impregnate Beatie each time.

Scott Moore, a transgender man, will give birth to a child in March 2010.

Male pregnancy by ectopic implantation

Robert Winston, a pioneer of in-vitro fertilization, told London’s Sunday Times that “male pregnancy would certainly be possible.” Ectopic implantation of the embryo along the abdominal wall, and resulting placenta growth would, however, be very dangerous and potentially fatal for the host, and is therefore unlikely to be studied in humans. Gillian Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services, a British fertility clinic, noted that the abdomen is not designed to separate from the placenta during delivery, hence the danger of an ectopic pregnancy. “The question is not ’Can a man do it?’ ” says bioethicist Glenn McGee. “It’s ’If a man does have a successful pregnancy, can he survive it?’ ”

The theoretical issue of male ectopic pregnancy in mammals by implantation (in biological males) was popularized by a 1985 article in Omni Magazine . In response, experts in the field of fertility medicine stress that the concept of ectopic implantation, while theoretically plausible, has never been attempted and would be difficult to justify even for women lacking a uterus, owing to the extreme health risks to both the parent and child.

Since 2000, several hoax web sites have appeared on the Internet purporting to describe the world's first pregnant man. While sometimes relying on legitimate scientific claims, in reality, no such experiment has ever been attested. Fertility clinician Cecil Jacobson claimed to have transplanted a fertilized egg from a female baboon to the omentum in the abdominal cavity of a male baboon in the mid-1960's, which then carried the fetus for four months; however Jacobson did not publish his claims in a scientific journal, and was subsequently convicted on several counts of fraud for ethical misconduct.

The first uterine transplant was performed in Saudi Arabia in 2000, from one woman to another. This advance drew speculation about the possibility of a male receiving a womb transplant, and bearing a child from the transplanted womb.

Fetus in fetu

Main article: Fetus in fetu

An extremely rare condition in which a fetus can grow inside the body is called "fetus in fetu". This is a developmental abnormality in which a fertilised egg splits as if to form identical twins, but one half becomes enveloped by the other, and an entire living organ system with torso and limbs can develop inside the host. The abnormality occurs in 1 in 500,000 live births in humans.

The case of Sanju Bhagat, a man from Nagpur, India, attracted attention in 1999 for the length of time (36 years) he had carried his parasitic twin inside his body, and the size of the growth. Since Bhagat had no placenta, the growth had connected directly to his blood supply.

Mythology

Various mythologies feature male characters giving birth, but such events typically take place in an entirely different fashion than an ordinary female pregnancy, such as Athena springing fully-formed from Zeus's forehead, or Dionysus being born from his thigh. In Hindu mythology, Lord Vishnu gives birth to Lord Brahma thus: a lotus emerges from his navel, like an external placenta and womb, carrying Brahma within. Male mythological figures may become pregnant when rendered female in some way, such as the shapeshifter Loki turning into a mare to distract a stallion and ending up giving birth to Sleipnir.

In popular culture

See also: Pregnancy in science fiction

Thematically, pregnancy can be related to the issues of parasitism and gender. Some science fiction writers have picked up on these issues, in "cross-gender" themes — e.g., Octavia E. Butler's Bloodchild . Ursula K. Le Guin's award-winning The Left Hand of Darkness , which contains the sentence "The king was pregnant", explores a society in which pregnancy can be experienced by anyone, since gender is variable within each person's lifetime. Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos features an all-male society in which men use artificial wombs, but experience many of the psychological effects of pregnancy (anticipation, anxiety, etc.). In Marge Piercy's feminist utopian novel Woman on the Edge of Time , neither men nor women get pregnant, leaving that to artificial wombs, but both sexes may lactate and nurse the infant; the specifically female experiences of pregnancy and nursing were opened to men in the cause of gender equality.

The concept of male implanted pregnancy was explored in the science fiction comedy/drama Junior , a 1994 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger whose screenplay was inspired by the Omni article.

The subject of male pregnancy was also explored in the 1990 BBC television comedy drama Frankenstein's Baby in which a Dr Eva Frankenstein helps a male patient to become the world's first pregnant man.

In the music industry, male pregnancy can be seen in the Mexican rock band Fobia's music video for "2 corazones" (2 hearts) and in English singer Will Young's music video for "Hopes & Fears", where Young himself appears heavily pregnant.

Virgil Wong, a performance artist, created a hoax site featuring a fictitious male pregnancy, claiming to detail the pregnancy of his friend Lee Mingwei.

See also

  • Allotransplantation, transplanting of non-native tissue
  • Couvade syndrome, a sympathetic condition
  • Male lactation
  • Male egg

References

  1. ^ "Male pregnancy". ScienceDirect. 2003-10-14 . http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-49SN5B1-5&_user=10&_handle=V-WA-A-W-WD-MsSAYWW-UUA-U-AAZAEZDBBD-AACECVYABD-ACYAVUUBU-WD-U&_fmt=full&_coverDate=10%2F14%2F2003&_rdoc=18&_orig=browse&_srch=%23toc%236243%232003%23999869979%23464936!&_cdi=6243&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=08311121da42f6825bc092a851bda224 .  
  2. ^ Jones, Adam G.; Avise, John C. (2003-10-14). "Male Pregnancy". Current Biology 13 (20): R791. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2003.09.045 . http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-49SN5B1-5&_user=10&_handle=V-WA-A-W-WD-MsSAYWW-UUA-U-AAZAEZDBBD-AACECVYABD-ACYAVUUBU-WD-U&_fmt=full&_coverDate=10%2F14%2F2003&_rdoc=18&_orig=browse&_srch=%23toc%236243%232003%23999869979%23464936!&_cdi=6243&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=08311121da42f6825bc092a851bda224 .

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