Can a Biological Male Have a Baby?

Extra-uterine pregnancy has occurred many times in nature. Fertilization can occur in a fallopian tube. Rarely the embryo ruptures the fallopean tube and gets lodged in other organs in the body to which it tries and is sometime successful at attaching the umbilical cord for life sustaining nuttients. This is called ectopic pregnancy, which in the past used to be end in disaster. The embryo is deformed and dies and the mother is often stuck with a calcified embryo in her body. In some undeveloped countries these are called stone babies. Complications of blood attachments and bleeding within the Mother made the removal of the fetus nearly impossible until recent times. Now with careful medical management and a lot of good luck an ectopic baby can sometimes be born and live a health life.

Many readers will have heard of Thomas Beatie, the transsexual, male husband (formerly a female) giving birth to a healthy baby. In fact, Mr. Beatie has a partial female reproductive system so this is not too surprising from a biological point of view. In fact he has recently announced that he is pregnant again.

More surprising is the fact that it may be possible with the appropriate medical procedures for a natural male to carry an in vitro fetus implanted in his abdominal cavity and given intensive hormone and other medical procedures. The morality, low success possibility, expense and motivation for this is certainly questionable but theoretically it can be done. If it can theoretically be done it will be tried somewhere in the World. The reason is the same as usual, money, fame (or infamy) and scientific curiosity will be the reasons for this.

Males of other species carry and give birth in nature. The male seahorse fertilizes and carries its offspring to birth. Many species are also endowed with the ability to go from female to male in their life cycle, along with the ability to fertilize themselves and become the single parent of the offspring it produces. Certain frogs (remember Jurassic Park) can go from male to female as can many lower invertebrates.

Personally even though I was raised by scienticifally oriented parents and have a master's degree in biology, I am not one of those people who are hoping this will even be tried. I think the present system of having children has been fine tuned for millions of years by nature and is the best milieu to rear children after birth. Publicity hounds often corrupt science just for money and fame. Although I am reluctant to draw a line in the sand and say what should be attempted or not, I think men who want babies should get them the old fashioned way by sexual intercourse with a female, adoption, artificial insemination or using a surrogate when all other means fail.