GLBT parents: How do they reproduce? Many children are products of earlier hetero relationships, adoption, or surrogate parenting. And now, they hope for stem cell/test tube solutions.
It's a good question: How the "GLBT community" plans to biologically sustain itself, since they can't naturally reproduce. Maybe the "Bisexuals" will lend a hand? (Is that why they've included the B in GLBT?) We are told that "sexual identity" is fluid for many in the "GLBT community", so maybe they become "Bi" for a few days or months, so they can reproduce? (Though this conflicts with the claim that they're "born that way". ) It's all so confusing!
We know that the surrogacy business is doing doing well with GLBTs. Recently, "Growing Generations" (a GLBT surrogacy company) donated $50,000 to Family Pride Coalition. (Family Pride is organizing the huge GLBT family fair in Provincetown next week. In attendance will surely by the new director of Family Pride, Jennifer Chrisler, "wife" of former State Senator and briefly head of the "Human Rights" Campaign, Cheryl Jacques and their twin boys. Don't miss this event!)
Now, the GLBT community is excited about some new stem cell research which could be used to generate eggs from a man's (adult) cells. So homosexual couples could have children genetically related to both. (Still have to implant that embryo in a surrogate.) We assume this could be applied to two women as well. From ProudParenting.com:
Stem Cell Research May Provide Hope to Gay Couples (Copenhagen) - Stem cell research by British scientists shows that cells extracted from human embryos can develop in the laboratory into the early forms of cells that become eggs or sperm.
The research increases the likelihood that one day eggs and sperm needed for infertility treatment could be grown in a dish, huge news for the gay and lesbian community. Preliminary experiments also suggest that scientists may eventually be able to use the technique to create a supply of eggs for cloning.... The findings were presented Monday in Copenhagen at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology....
Stem cells are the master cells of the body, appearing when embryos are just a few days old and developing into every type of cell and tissue in the body, including sperm and eggs.
For infertile couples, that approach would eliminate the need for donor sperm or eggs. But any treatment using eggs and sperm grown from stem cells, let alone from stem cells extracted from a cloned embryo, may be many years away...
"It opens new and challenging possibilities: because the technique can be used to generate eggs from a man's (adult) cells, gay couples could have children genetically related to both," said Anna Smajdor, a medical ethicist at Imperial College in London. "These possibilities raise new questions about how we define parenthood and about how we decide who has access to these new technologies," she said.
