Tracy Clark-Flory ponders the evolving science of pregnancy:
Imagine a woman being able to convert her own eggs into "pseudo-sperm" to fertilize herself – or perhaps instead an artificial womb that will carry the pregnancy to term while she continues her uninterrupted climb up the career ladder. Picture an older woman harvesting eggs from her own bone marrow to beat her ticking biological clock. … [It] sounds like the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, but a new book suggests it’s an inevitable reality. In "Like a Virgin: How Science Is Redefining the Rules of Sex," author Aarathi Prasad writes, "This would be the great biological and social equalizer, a truly new way of thinking about sex. The question is not if it will happen, but when."
It isn’t just women who stand to benefit, either: Artificial wombs will actually give men "more potential than women to make a baby without the opposite sex," says Prasad, a biologist and science writer. The takeaway is that "male plus female equals baby will no longer be our only path forward."
Prasad's book also examines single-sex parenting in the animal kingdom. For example, here is an explanation of how an all-female tribe of Whiptail lizard reproduces through a form of lesbian sex.
The Dish 