New Three-Parent Fertilisation Method May Aid Trans People In Having Children: Report

Transgender people's reproductive rights are a little-discussed component of the global debate over reproductive rights rollbacks. It may be argued that the situation is even more complicated when it comes to trans males who want to have their own children.

The process frequently entails invasive, dysphoric reproductive procedures that conflict with gender-affirming procedures. However, a recent development might alter that.

Trans Men Parenting

Antonia Christodoulaki of Ghent University in Belgium discovered indications of a three-parent fertilisation procedure that could allow trans guys to procreate without the use of regular IVF treatments. According to Christodoulaki, who presented her research at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, the procedure could support trans men's legal ability to father their own children. “Every person should have the right to reproduce,” she said in an interview with the MIT Technology Review.

Currently, trans males who want to get pregnant receive treatments that encourage the release of many eggs at once from their ovaries. They must do one of two things as a result: stop gender-affirming medical procedures like hormone therapy, or put off the procedure until after their eggs have been collected and frozen. Egg production may be hampered by the hormone testosterone, which is given as part of gender-affirming therapy.

Technically speaking, this procedure is effective, but experiencing the unpleasant side effects of ovaries-stimulating fertility drugs, such as cramps, breast soreness, and other things, can be depressing. Additionally, the process for gathering eggs is replete with medical procedures that overemphasise the gendered body, such as vaginal examinations.

Following that, the new technique combines two procedures that are previously used often by clinicians. It functions by completely removing a piece of the ovary and delivering fertility therapies externally, or in other words, inducing egg production from the excised portion of the ovary. The researchers then used sperm to fertilise the eggs of trans males to compare their fertility to that of cis women. The results revealed that trans men's eggs had a poorer rate of successful fertilisation and a worse rate of fertilised embryo survival than cis woman's eggs.

The three-parent method can be applied in this situation. Transplanting DNA-containing nucleic material from trans men's eggs into cis women's eggs that had the same material removed is what this procedure entails. This is a result of the hypothesis that the issue was with the cytoplasm or the cell's internal components outside the nucleus. It was discovered that the generated embryos outlived trans men's embryos by more than five days. Additionally, they are the result of three different sets of reproductive cells: sperm, eggs from two different individuals, and eggs from another individual.

Although the approach is not currently clinically applicable, it has the potential to fundamentally alter trans men's reproductive health, particularly because it acknowledges dysphoria as a preventable health problem. Even after transitioning, trans men's ovaries can still produce eggs at a rate that is comparable to that of cis women, according to recent studies, although doing so requires temporarily discontinuing testosterone use for several months.

“The thought of stopping testosterone or going through hormone treatments is very daunting for them, so they frequently don't pursue it because of that,” Dr Samuel Pang, a reproductive endocrinologist at Boston IVF, says. Many trans men who might otherwise have wanted their own children are opting out of it — and medical barriers to safe, affirmative ways to do so are one of the main reasons.

Additionally, three-parent infants have previously been born. The replacement of unhealthy mitochondrial DNA from a third person with mitochondrial DNA from a parent who has a hereditary condition is referred to as mitochondrial transfer.

According to the Harvard University blog, “This term is slightly misleading, as the child does not have an equal proportion of DNA from each parent. Rather, the majority of the child’s DNA is from his parents, with only a small fraction coming from the mitochondria of the donor egg or third parent.” 

However, while this particular approach raises a number of ethical questions, such as those related to eugenics, the three-parent method does not. For starters, it replaces defective cytoplasm in trans men's eggs rather than swapping DNA for gene editing purposes.

If the process is successful, it will broaden the definition of reproductive rights to take into consideration the variety of healthcare requirements among persons. Currently, a large number of trans males and non-binary people claim to already feel excluded from discussions regarding reproductive rights. Reproductive science is also starting to catch up to this frontier.

The example of Sam, a trans guy who gave birth to a stillborn child as a result of medical professionals disregarding his stomach pain as a non-urgent condition because they registered him as a man, was examined in one review. The study concluded that reaching health equity requires "inclusive clinical care and research that examines the relationship between sex assigned at birth, gender identity, and societal determinants of health."

When we begin to recognise reproductive rights as vital to all human beings' bodily autonomy, we may begin to include pain and overall well-being in the conversation. The new method that can lessen dysphoria in trans men who want to become parents biologically then supports the significance of viewing reproductive rights as extending beyond procreation — but widens its scope into one that is rooted in bodily autonomy and freedom.

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