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Male pregnancy

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Male pregnancy, a male carrying offspring, is almost a contradiction in terms - pregnancy is a nigh-universally female attribute. However, exceptions do exist.

In virtually all life on Earth that gives birth to live young, the female carries the embryos. Males (the sperm-generating half of heterogamous systems) very seldomly have the opportunity to host a zygote, not to mention bringing one to term. Rare exceptions include the seahorses. A male seahorse takes and fertilises the ovum of the female, then bears the offspring.

Contents

1 In humans

2 Mythology and fiction

3 See also

4 External links

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In humans

Male pregnancy in humans has been limited to the realms of speculation, science fiction and bad comedy as the phenomenom would be a biological impossibility under traditional circumstances. Due to advances in modern medicine the concept is generally considered possible, but both the risks and the chances of success are still at foolhardy levels. No known attempts at initiating a male pregnancy, much less carrying one out, have been made to date.

Since men lack a womb, alternative measures have to be made. Ectopic pregnancy is a given. Fertilization would be done in vitro by implantation into the abdominal cavity, and keeping the process going would require the father to take female hormones - blurring the line between the sexes, from some viewpoints. Delivery would be done by caesarean section.

Should treatment of transsexuals reach a point where post-operative ones can become fertile in their resulting sex, some of the resulting pregnancies might get considered male ones. In the meantime, a possible use for the procedure described above could be helping transpersons get children of their own.

Male pregnancy is likely to generate considerable ethical and some religious problems, but at the moment they are hardly relevant.

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Mythology and fiction

Various mythologies have featured male characters birthing, but such events typically either take place in an entirely different fashion than an ordinary female pregnancy, such as Athena springing fully formed from Zeus's forehead, or when the character has been 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.

Two comedy films centered around the theme of such an event in humans, Rabbit Test (1978) and Junior (1994), have been released. The latter attempts to seem feasible; the former ignores the matter completely.

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