It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The treatment has also raised concerns in the LGBT community following an essay posted to the forum of the Hastings Center, a think tank devoted to bioethics, which quoted published research that suggested that pre-natal treatment of female fetuses could prevent those fetuses from becoming lesbians after birth, may make them more likely to engage in "traditionally" female-identified behaviour and careers, and more interested in bearing and raising children. Citing a known attempt by a man using his knowledge of the fraternal birth order effect to avoid having a homosexual son by using a surrogate, the essayists (Professor Alice Dreger of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, Professor Ellen Feder of American University and attorney Anne Tamar-Mattis) suggest that pre-natal "dex" treatments constitute the first known attempt to use in utero protocols to reduce the incidence of homosexuality and bisexuality in humans.[8] They find such tampering to be morally objectionable.
Late-blooming lesbians have attracted increasing attention over the last years, partly due to the clutch of glamorous, high-profile women who have come out after heterosexual relationships. Cynthia Nixon, for instance, who plays Miranda in Sex and the City, was in a heterosexual relationship for 15 years, and had two children, before falling for her current partner, Christine Marinoni, in 2004.
The consequences can be traumatic.
As the new research reveals, mothers understandably agonize about the reaction of their children if their sexuality begins to waver. Christian Moran, who conducted the studies at the Southern Connecticut State University, found that many women initially go through what is effectively psychological trauma as they try to reconcile their loyalties to their families with their attraction to other women.
While for many women “coming out” is a liberating and ultimately fulfilling experience, for others there can be irrevocable damage to their family relationships.