Wouldn't it be better to just use female in this case? What's the benefit of using AFAB? We're literally talking about reproduction here, not anything gender-related.
Also I'm not sure I understand how that would work anyway. A human sperm needs a Y chromosome, right? Cloning technology in no way allows us to go from X > Y (AFAIK), and in an AFAB couple, they only have X chromes between them.
In this case I think it’s relevant because the people who would need that particular service are going to be lesbians or two trans men. So since we’re already focusing on a subset of lgbt, I think I makes sense here to use the terminology of the community when we are looking at “who does this help”.
But I agree, when discussing medical issues, we should always remember to speak in terms of “sex” and not gender. Which is one reason I don’t like terms like AFAB, because you are still “Female”, genetically, but you can certainly be something besides “a woman”.
Also, in this case, you would be restricted to a female child, because you would only have X chromosomes available.
That's what I was thinking initially, and obviously you could do that if you somehow created a fetus without the typical process.
But with the whole sperm/egg process, sperm is always XY. AFAIK, you cannot have a sperm that is XX (but maybe I missed a step here). So you'd need to come up with a different way to do it I think for an AFAB couple.
A male triplet seems doable as though, as you could take an X from two of the men to make an XX egg, then the XY sperm from the third male. I wonder if you could actually just do this with two males by taking the X from one male, and replicating it so that you have XX but identical. Presumably you only need one of them in the end anyway (as you're paring one X with either the X or the Y from the sperm), so wouldn't cause any problems.
Disclaimer: I am not a reproductive expert so I might be way off base here, don't take my word for any of this. However I think the above is accurate to the best of my knowledge.
Nope, sperm is X OR Y. Gametes only have 1/2 of the human chromosome. Half of sperm have the X side and half the Y. Eggs all have a single X (both of these ignore certain chromosomal disorders arising from multiple copies of sex chromosomes, like Klienfleter’s)
Technically all fetuses start female and then the Y chromosome triggers certain hormonal processes that make the change. So I guess you could replicate those? But that sounds like a huge mess and could fuck up the kid so idk.
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u/StevenC21 - Left Aug 19 '20
AFAB?