Here’s a question for your Friday consideration: Should science work toward modifying males so that they can give birth?

It’s actually not as ridiculous as it sounds; PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has a nice post up about some of the particulars of such a concept:

Zygotes are aggressive little parasites that will implant just about anywhere in the coelom — it’s why ectopic pregnancies are a serious problem — so all we need to do there is culture a bit of highly vascularized tissue in the male abdomen that will serve as a secure home for a few months. We’ll have to play some endocrine games, too, which may effect his love life but will also prepare him to lactate post-partum. There’s the minor anatomical problem that the vagina is a unique tissue, and no, the urethra is not homologous or analogous (fortunately; we wouldn’t want to have to push an 8 pound baby through the penis, even if female hyenas can manage it) — but that’s what c-sections are for. Given money, time, and a few weird volunteers, it could be done.

I probably have more radical views on gender and “nature” than the average person (in other words, I think gender is a social construct and “nature” is a vague term thrown around to help reinforce strict gender roles), but I don’t actually see a downside to science giving men the option to get pregnant and have babies. It’s the getting there that will be shaky and ethically iffy (that whole finding human volunteers thing could pose a real obstacle), but it’s possible that such a revolutionary event could happen in the next few decades.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where men could experience the real thing instead of just an empathy belly? Surely there are men out there right now who would relish the experience of being pregnant. Surely there are straight couples who would rather the male half be the child-bearer. And surely there are gay men in relationships who would love to have a child without having to adopt or go to a surrogate.

I suppose many people rankle at the thought of a big, hairy pregnant belly, or a man in maternity (paternity?) clothing. It seems like a fiction, a funny punchline. Not sweet or heart-warming, sadly. Just weird. But why?

(In this case, it is definitely a fiction, but one that has drawn much ire from conservative groups.)

It doesn’t have to be weird and repulsive. To every person who gags and says, “That’s just not natural,” consider what Sigrid Fry-Revere, director of bioethics studies at the Cato Institute, says: “Scientific advancement is what humanity is about.”

There are some people who would argue — as Emma Thompson’s character in Junior did — that men get everything else in the world, why should they get to experience pregnancy too? And others might argue than men just aren’t hardwired to be nurturing mothers the way women are. The list of “buts” goes on and on. Many are valid complaints (I would argue counter to both those points, actually).

And yet, I keep coming back to the feeling that there would be no downside to the option. We’re not talking compulsory pregnancy for any man. We’re just talking options.

There was a really interesting take on this subject in Seattle’s The Stranger back in July. Author Jen Graves asks her partner Patrick — hypothetically, of course — if he’ll have her baby. They begin a conversation that teases out all the insecurities and weirdness that goes along with planning a baby to be birthed by the daddy. It turns gender roles upside down and gives each half of the couple so much more to think about in terms of gender, sexuality, parenting, not to mention just being human.

All that philosophical turmoil from just thinking about a man having a baby.

Again, I just don’t see the downside.

But let’s see what you think:

Illustration by Aaron Bagley