Male pregnancy

Can a Man Handle Pregnancy?

Regular reader Andrea Smart pointed out to me another infographic made by Neo Mammilian Studios, called Can a Man Handle Pregnancy?

As an aside, Andrea works for the company that makes the infographics and I always feel a bit guilty using them because, rather than just posting them (they don't fit well in my narrow column), I end up hacking them into pieces and then wandering off on a tangent inspired by their content.

What can I say -- I luvs me some free content and can't control myself. So, go look at Can a Man Handle Pregnancy? so I don't feel like such an ungrateful mooch.

That out of the way, the infographic discusses what would be needed to get a man pregnant and what sort of physical changes it would entail. I went to several of the links at the bottom of the infographic and discovered Science20's article Can A Man Really Get Pregnant? Sure, But It Might Kill Him. Well, that title isn't very encouraging, is it?

The article points out that, while very rare, there is a type of pregnancy where the fertilized egg doesn't make it to the uterus and instead attaches to an organ in the abdomen. It can come to term, although a cesarean is needed for birth. Thus, in theory a fertilized egg could be implanted in a male's abdomen and he could carry it to term. However, as the article points out there is a downside to this:

Unfortuntately, when an embryo implants into an abdominal tissue, detachment is not so simple. The problem is that the development of the placenta can cause complete intermixing between embryonic and host tissues so that there is no clean boundary between the two. The more extensive the intermixing is, the more problematic it becomes to remove placental tissue. The physician has to cut between the wholely placental tissue, and the intermingled placental-‘maternal’ tissue. Large blood vessels must be severed, and as a consequence, difficult-to-control internal bleeding can take place.

Problems are not just confined to the stage at which a pregnancy is terminated. Long before the final event, a placenta can cause severe damage to an organ that it’s invaded with the possibility of spontaneous hemorrhaging that can quickly result in death.

Uh... I think I'll pass on that.

By the way, the infographic was put together for somebody selling an iPhone app called Knocked App. From the looks of it you take a picture of somebody and it automatically Photoshops a pregnant belly on them. I would make fun of the silliness of it, but I have an app on my phone called Zombie Booth that turns a person's snapshot into a zombie which is equally as silly I suppose, so I don't really have much room to tsk-tsk in a superior manner.