Stem cell research has the potential to change the standard gendered parental relationships by making it possible for women to produce sperm and eggs from stem cells say British researchers in the Globe and Mail.
Better yet, a new Canadian “mockumentary” called The Baby Formula brings to the public’s attention the fact that some day in the future human reproduction may be markedly different than it is today.
So what’s the big deal? So we will be able to produce sperm from women’s bone marrow or other stem cell sources and reproduction will no longer require men. Lesbian couples will no longer rely upon sperm donors to have children who at best could only be 50 percent biologically theirs.
Really, the social hurdles shouldn’t be the ones that are hardest to overcome, but rather the research ethics challenges. To know whether or not these new “sperm” are viable, embryos made with female only DNA will have to be created and implanted into women and brought to term. There are serious risks with performing this research, and inherently, the women signing up to do this research will be those most desperate to have a child. Thus, the most critical concerns will be: will these women care about informed consent or just having a child?
The ethics concerns here are numerous, but the social ones should not be. Giving same-sex couples a chance to have biologically related children is an important opportunity that ought not be missed–overcoming the ethics concerns is really the only issue that SHOULD have been addressed in such a movie, even a “mockumentary.”
Summer Johnson, PhD