tejuina:

completeemoshat:

jmeii:

shoutout to science 👌🏼🔬

please do not crucify me for this, I’m begging fucking someone to not cause discourse over this and instead calmly respond when I say that for a trans woman to conceive, they need like,,, more than ovaries. They need a uterus, one that makes the lining and all the nutrients and they need the placenta to form and like… You would need to move all sort of shit around to put that there.

please no one get mad at me I’m not being transphobic the article just does a shitty job of explaining.

I’m begging you all to go read the actual article.

this isn’t a magical robotic ovary that produces its own eggs. what the scientists do is take already existing ovarian tissue and early-stage follicles before cancer treatment, remove cancerous cells, and bioengineer a new ovary that can be transplanted into the woman after she’s been treated.

so far, the two methods available for women are: 1) freeze some of her eggs so that she can attempt IVF later on, or 2) freeze ovarian tissue and reimplant it after treatment (less common because of the risk the ovarian tissue may contain malignant cells and reintroduce the cancer).

these two methods are ridiculously expensive, and I don’t doubt this artificial ovary would be even more expensive. its advantage over the currently used methods is that it would: 1) remove the risk of reintroducing the cancer, 2) allow the woman to get pregnant naturally (without the need to keep a limited number of eggs frozen), and 3) remove the need for hormone replacement therapy as this new ovary would restore her normal hormone levels. it has yet to be tested on humans.

in other words, this is about preserving fertility rather than artificially introducing the ability to get pregnant. worth noting that, once again, female health is mainly relevant to science when it comes to preserving our ability to bear offspring! hopefully future research into this will look into the woman’s health holistically instead of focusing on possible future pregnancy.