# What if women could transfer pregnancies to men? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 4, 2025, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849 "2025-02-04T02:04:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/1 "2025-02-04T02:04:35Z")
For the sake of this thought experiment assume alien space bats visit Earth and give pregant human women the ability to unilaterally transfer a developing fetus/embryo/zygote etc into a man’s body while simultaneously enabling him to carry it to term. She can only transfer it to the biological father’s body and he can’t tranfer it. What would be the legal, social, and cultural ramifications of this? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/2 "2025-02-04T02:11:50Z")
Terror? That would probably kill a man, we don’t have the excess metabolic capacity to sustain a pregnancy. And would have a good chance of getting the woman who did it murdered in retaliation. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/3 "2025-02-04T02:23:53Z")
What a thought. There would be no more question about paternity. Maybe a lot more paid paternity leave. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/4 "2025-02-04T02:27:19Z")
One thing that _would_ happen is that suddenly abortion would be perfectly moral…for the men. Still “baby killing” for the women, though. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/5 "2025-02-04T02:48:13Z")
The obvious point of this thought experiment is that it would stir up a lot of the existing socio-biological assumptions about inherent male and female natures and hence inherent male and female roles that are putatively actually biologically determined, not socially determined. IOW changing nature as an experiment to smoke out what of current reality is really truly nature and what is mere nurture masquerading as nature. As a serious answer. … At the bio level … There are plenty of species where the nurturing of embryos is a joint effort or even a male-led effort. There is no particular correlation between that and how much investment is made by both parents in offspring post-birth / post-hatching. Translated to humans, that suggest that maybe a male carrying a fetus to term would become highly attached to it as real human females are attached now. OTOH, maybe not, and they’d as soon abandon it as arrange for it to be fed. From a more social perspective, I’d expect nearly every unwanted or one-night-stand pregnancy to be transferred to the responsible male. With a concomitant reduction in male willingness to play the unprotected one-night stand game. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/6 "2025-02-04T03:21:12Z")
_“Sperm Donor Found Exploded In Alley.”_ ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/7 "2025-02-04T03:21:32Z")
You’d be able to get abortions via drive thru everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/8 "2025-02-04T03:32:21Z")
Rapes would typically culminate in precautionary murder. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/9 "2025-02-04T07:47:09Z")
Can you imagine the parents who can’t make it to term with a live baby? They’d have a second incubator available. Then there’s that old saw about “I carried it 9 months, it’s now your turn”… The rape thing/transfer won’t work. No woman can know the instant she’s impregnated. Not like he’s gonna call and ask about her it. She’d have to find him later to do the transfer. My god, would’nt that be scary? ---
**Author:** ![Mikkel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikkel/32/13151_2.png) [@Mikkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikkel)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/10 "2025-02-04T07:59:40Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > The rape thing/transfer won’t work. No woman can know the instant she’s impregnated. But would the transfer have to be in person, up close? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/11 "2025-02-04T11:43:17Z")
It would be an interesting combat or assassination tactic. Gather a horde of pregnant women, dress them innocuously, and send them out to impregnate the enemy by proximity alone. Or could they transfer the pregnancy at range, by sheer willpower? Even better. Could they time it such that multiple women could sequentially cause these unwanted remote pregnancies, one abortion after another, until the man succumbs to sheer exhaustion? Could they fill him with twins? Octo-babies? So many possibilities. Basically everything spammers can already do, but with teleporting magic alien babies. Edit: Ah, bummer, just noticed the restriction about only being able to do that to the baby’s biological father. Too bad. Guess they’d have to take up a sperm donation first. It’d probably be really cool for gay male couples though. Surrogate moms only need to hang around for a few minutes after insemination. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/12 "2025-02-04T11:47:00Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Basically everything spammers can already do, but with teleporting magic alien babies. Except for this bit in the OP: > [@alphaboi867](#): > > She can only transfer it to the biological father’s body and he can’t tranfer it. But you’re right if women were living breathing Star Trek transporters of fetuses and only fetuses, that’d be one hell of a weapon. Their reloading procedure is a bit arduous, and the rate of fire is low, but the effects at the target are big. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/13 "2025-02-04T13:19:41Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Edit: Ah, bummer, just noticed the restriction about only being able to do that to the baby’s biological father. Too bad. Guess they’d have to take up a sperm donation first. On the other hand it would make for an interesting (and messy) method of assassination for, say, a few dozen women to artificially inseminate themselves and teleport all the resulting fetuses into the donor at once. Reminds me of the [old SMBC comic](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2006-06-08) about the superheroine whose power is “I can make puppies appear anywhere!” Which is a lot scarier than the supervillain thinks. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/14 "2025-02-04T15:33:03Z")
Not actually a “transfer”, but in Thorne Smith’s [_Turnabout_](https://fantasyliterature.com/reviews/turnabout/), Tim gets pregnant and delivers a baby. Memorable line: “Suckle this young, and make it snappy.” ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/15 "2025-02-04T16:24:32Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > On the other hand it would make for an interesting (and messy) method of assassination for, say, a few dozen women to artificially inseminate themselves and teleport all the resulting fetuses into the donor at once. Depending on how far along the fetuses are in the gestation process, there may be some moral concerns associated with using them as kamikaze drones. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-could-transfer-pregnancies-to-men/1013849/16 "2025-02-05T22:45:33Z")
In the TV show **Sliders** the characters came to an Earth mostly like ours but some kind of disorder had developed in which women concieved but could not carry to term. So about halfway through the fetus was transferred to the husband.