Originally posted yesterday afternoon at 3:15 PM.

That’s not fair, as Hanna Rosin at Slate will shortly point out. Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New—of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University—isn’t just trying to prevent lesbianism by treating pregnant women with an experimental hormone. She’s also trying to prevent the births of girls who display an “abnormal” disinterest in babies, don’t want to play with girls’ toys or become mothers, and whose “career preferences” are deemed too “masculine.” Unbelievable:

The majority of researchers and clinicians interested in the use of prenatal “dex” focus on preventing development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with CAH. CAH results in an excess of androgens prenatally, and this can lead to a “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals. One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.

Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation…. They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation. The authors write, “Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls . . . and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization.” They go on to suggest that the work might offer some insight into the influence of prenatal hormones on the development of sexual orientation in general. “That this may apply also to sexual orientation in at least a subgroup of women is suggested by the fact that earlier research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens.” They “conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.”

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men—and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games—as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex:

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior.” Nimkarn and New continue: “We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization…”

It seems more than a little ironic to have New, one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, constructing women who go into “men’s” fields as “abnormal.” And yet it appears that New is suggesting that the “prevention” of “behavioral masculinization” is a benefit of treatment to parents with whom she speaks about prenatal dex. In a 2001 presentation to the CARES Foundation (a videotape of which we have), New seemed to suggest to parents that one of the goals of treatment of girls with CAH is to turn them into wives and mothers. Showing a slide of the ambiguous genitals of a girl with CAH, New told the assembled parents:

“The challenge here is… to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

In the Q&A period, during a discussion of prenatal dex treatments, an audience member asked New, “Isn’t there a benefit to the female babies in terms of reducing the androgen effects on the brain?” New answered, “You know, when the babies who have been treated with dex prenatally get to an age in which they are sexually active, I’ll be able to answer that question.” At that point, she’ll know if they are interested in taking men and making babies.

In a previous Bioethics Forum post, Alice Dreger noted an instance of a prospective father using knowledge of the fraternal birth order effect to try to avoid having a gay son by a surrogate pregnancy. There may be other individualized instances of parents trying to ensure heterosexual children before birth. But the use of prenatal dexamethasone treatments for CAH represents, to our knowledge, the first systematic medical effort attached to a “paradigm” of attempting in utero to reduce rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and “low maternal interest.”

So no more Elena Kagans, no more Donna Shalalas, no more Martina Navratilovas, no more k.d. langs, no more Constance McMillens—because all women must grow up to suck dick, crank out babies, and do women’s work. And the existence of adult women who are not interested in “becoming someone’s wife” and “making babies” constitutes a medical emergency that requires us to treat women who are currently pregnant with a dangerous experimental hormone. Otherwise their daughters might grow up to, um, be nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, serve as cabinet secretaries, take 18 Grand Slam singles titles, win Grammies, and take their girlfriends to prom.

And we can’t have that.

Two things: Gay people have been stressing out about the day arriving when scientists developed treatments to prevent homosexuality. The preventing gay sheep freak out is here, Twilight of the Golds is here, and I recall—but can’t quickly find a link for—a “fellow” at the Family Research Council or the American Family Association who backed in-utero hormone treatments to prevent homosexuality. Well, here we are—the day appears to have arrived. Now what are we going to do about it?

And will the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee invite Maria New to testify at Elana Kagan’s confirmation hearings? New could argue that Kagan—childless, unmarried Kagan—is unfit to serve on our highest court because her “low maternal interest” pegs her as abnormal, well outside the “maternal mainstream.” Maybe GOP senators would be mollified if Kagan knocked back a few bottles of dex during her confirmation hearings?

UPDATE: A little more about dex from Alice Dreger:

The specific drug we’re talking about, dexamethasone, is not a benign drug for pregnant women, nor for the children exposed in utero. The studies we do have on the early prenatal use of “dex” are worrisome. The number of women and children missing from the follow-up studies of this drug use is more worrisome still.

This drug is unequivocally experimental and risky. That’s why, back in February, I organized interested members of the Bioethics community to fight to make sure every woman offered dex for CAH knows the truth about its experimental and risky nature. (You can read about our efforts in Time magazine. And you can about the medical establishment’s resultant mad scampering to make sure everyone knows this is experimental here.) Make no mistake: In spite of Dr. Maria New’s outrageous FDA-regulation-flaunting claims that this off-label drug use “has been found safe for mother and child,” it ain’t been. New is a rogue pediatrician whom medical societies have been nudging (and sometimes yelling at) for years. Because she apparently wouldn’t stop experimenting on these women and children without ethics oversight, in January I got called in to help by a few freaked-out clinicians. And I called in my colleagues to call out the feds. New just looks and sounds safe for mothers and children. Which is why she’s really dangerous.

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222 replies on “Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism”

  1. Well, it’s finally here. My first reaction was horror, but then I started to try to calm myself down. There is NO WAY, if you look around you, that prenatal androgens are the only things that turn women gay/bisexual/career-oriented (or SMART, as some people seem to be suggesting!). For example, of 3 full-blooded female children in my family, 2 are career-oriented tomboy scientists with no aspirations for kids yet and 1 (the MIDDLE one) is a more traditionally feminine liberal arts major who wants children (and ALL are very smart and ambitious). Anecdotal, but that’s all we have to go on at this point and I’m sure most people know such examples. In 30 years, once there are enough of these poor little human guinea pigs of child-rearing age, we’ll have a good idea of how ‘straight/conventional’ you can make a woman in the womb. And it will probably be a number like 30% which wouldn’t inspire any thinking person to get the treatment.

    Three more points for the people freaking out here: 1. Wanting children in itself doesn’t equal stupidity or spinelessness. So they aren’t impacting intelligence here; only levels of ambition to do certain things, at worst. And ambition to do ‘feminine’ things is a social concept. Medicine, for example, used to be a ‘masculine’ field because only men went into it, which attracted mostly men. Now more women are going into MD programs than men, so it’s being seen as more of a feminine, caretaking profession (and one in which you can set your own hours and allow yourself time to raise children). So childrearing also doesn’t = staying in the house. 2. There’s the fairly likely possibility that women who get dex treatment over the next 10 years won’t exactly be very intelligent (who else could you talk into such a thing?). So the girls treated with dex in the womb will likely have an IQ/education rate that’s a few points below average. This alone will be a deterrent to many people getting the treatment in the future (although if it happens, one premature conclusion will be that feminine = stupid, which I have mixed feelings about). 3. There are ALWAYS side effects. Let’s hang in there for 10 years because you know that on a certain portion of embryos, this will turn them homicidal or mentally ill or something. There’s the distinct possibility that the number of people getting side effects from this treatment will be higher than the number of people ‘normalized’ by it.

    In short, the science will tell the tale in 30-50 years — and I imagine it will be a tale that gender, ambition, sex drive, attitudes toward children, and intelligence have many contributing causes from many different genes as well as many different developmental inputs. I personally don’t think this will have an impact on intelligence at all because I really don’t think intelligence is different between men/women and gay/straight/bisexual. But we will now see some data to support/refute this. We can’t do anything but hang in there, wait for the results, and say a prayer for the unwilling embryonic human guinea pigs 🙁 And do our best to minimize the suffering by keeping watch over how this is deployed.

    One thought: could this be one woman’s plan to ‘breed-out’ homophobes by appealing to their worst fears and then mutating their children in the womb? Whether or not she means to, this might be the outcome.

  2. I can’t believe a pregnant woman would agree to this experimental treatment – when I was pregnant five years ago, I was advised to avoid tuna fish, sushi, coffee, soft cheeses, not to mention hair dye, nail polish, etc., and the only medicines that are truly green-lighted are a couple things like Tylenol and Tums. So, with no evidence of an urgent problem (how can genital abnormality be detected that early in utero anyhow?), what expectant mother would feel comfortable tampering with her fetus like this? Plus, it so obviously reeks of eugenics. It’s unethical. And @33: what the hell are you talking about? Your comment was totally off subject, and yet I couldn’t help noticing that you seem to be anti-abortion AND anti-Planned Parenthood, the two of which stances are pretty much mutually exclusive. Planned Parenthood provides access to birth control and sex education, particularly for low-income and young citizens. And any fuckwit should be able to figure out that more birth control and informed use thereof will strongly correlate with fewer unintended pregnancies, and therefore, fewer….abortions. I’m getting tired of having to explain this. Folks who claim to be anti-abortion but then are also anti-Planned Parenthood need to realize that what they really are are sex-negative puritanical spoilsports who want to have their cake and eat it too, and who, by the way, don’t happen to give a shit about unwanted babies.

  5. This is horrid. Absolutely horrid.
    I am a woman with no interest in babies, or female role models, or dresses, or lipstick. And I am NOT a lesbian… well, a bit bi maybe, but I’m living with a man. And those bitches would have wanted to fix me even before I was born???

  6. I have endometriosis. It made two years of my life hell. Being queer has lead to some uncomfortable conversations with my mother (she’s detail-oriented, awkward), as well as some great sex and relationships.

    If scientists are looking into female hormones, why not put more effort into decreasing the suffering of women with illnesses that affect their lives negatively? The baby thing is no excuse; I’d be at an extremely high risk of infertility if I wanted to get pregnant, and miscarriage if I ever did. Not that it would be an issue, with that pesky bisexuality interfering with my low maternal interest.

  8. I love the assumption that since I love another woman I am uninterested in marriage with her or bearing children. What about the women who do both? Are they abnormal also? How completely nonsensical.

  9. Um, wow. A bit chilling on a Wednesday morning to read that there are people who think you should have been medically edited out of existence. I actually feel kind of numb after reading this stuff.

  10. This is why straight women’s rights are intimately tied to gay rights. Sometimes I feel that straight women sit around with their head stuck in the sand, adhering to that old “when they came for X, I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an X”.

    To the straight ladies reading this article, when they ask you if you want your fetus “pre-emptively fixed”, what are you going to say?

    I’m one of these godawful childfree women with low maternal instinct and high career drive that supposedly these people are working to eradicate. I know some people think I’m an abomination but I never foresaw the day that a bad movie could be reality (Gattica), because I just figured we’d worry about life-threatening disabilities first. Not the fact I don’t want babies.

  11. I’m with you Janusdog, I never liked kids, even when I was one, and didn’t do too much with dolls when I was a kid. I never thought it was a negative thing that I had no desire to clutter the planet with additional small beings. That said, I am still heterosexual, although no on in my circle of life would give two hoots if I wasn’t, and I’m 46.

    I spent many, many years trying to talk various doctors into removing my ability to procreate, finally getting my tubes tied in my late 30s. Why should it be such a struggle when men can go in and get snipped at any time?

    Plus, you’d think they’d worry more about serious female illness rather than worry about whether someone does or does not want to procreate from an early age on.

    Imbeciles.

  14. Ahh, watching the Loony Left fight science this time.

    So sucking out a 6 month old fetus, killing it and  dumping it in the garbage: ok!

    Preventing baby girls from having dicks: Bad!

    Some of us are at least consistent and oppose both.

  15. Ugh. And I hate the implication that being a tomboy when you’re little means you’re a big ol’ lesbian. There was never a day before prom where I wore a skirt, and I was all about the trucks and the dirt and the sports; but now I am all about the cock. Fuck them and their patriarchal assumptions.

  16. CHRIST.
    I studied behavioral endocrinology in college. CAH is mostly a problem because it can affect fertility. Women who have it tend to have symptoms that are similar to polycystic ovarian syndrome.
    Yes, one outcome is “masculinized behavior” but by that they mean little girls will play with toys by moving them through space instead of nurturing them (it’s called masculinized not just because little boys do it, but because male primates play that way. It’s a scientific “masculinized” and not social use of the word per se).
    A large amount of women who seek sex change operations turn out to have CAH as well, which is only interesting to endocrinologists because it tells us that prenatal hormones affect sexuality. This information was helpful in showing us that we can give post-op hormones and they can help the transition from FTM or MTF.
    It’s something you don’t want your kids to get (fertility, health problems, PCOS symptoms) and so it’s theoretically worth curing, but not for the sexuality reasons. And it’s not worth fucking with pregnant women’s hormones.

    http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/congeni…

    ALSO WORTH NOTING:
    This week Dan has been talking a lot about female genital mutilation. Women with CAH are more likely to receive this type of mutilation by doctors at birth. Until around 2001, it was incredibly common (not just by quack weirdos–it was fairly par in medical training to “trim” the clitoris if it was enlarged). Because these girls are exposed to more androgens (testosterone, DHT, etc) in utero, their genitals are enlarged, sometimes so severe that it’s hard to determine if they are male or female.
    What’s troubling is that, yes, most girls who have this would probably want to avoid the extra body hair, fertility problems and weird looking genitals. But medical solutions so far have been (i) CUTTING OFF PARTS OF THE CLITORIS and (ii) GIVING PREGNANT MOMS A BUNCH OF WHACK HORMONES and then saying it’s because CAH girls are gay, which isn’t not the real medical condition here.

    Remember when we gave moms DES?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstil…

  17. One last thing–I just read some of the comments about how DEX is given before fetal sex is known. Boys can have CAH. All it does is give them more androgens and make their penis humongous.

  18. Terrified as I am by this, I’m even more scared by the people I know who might conceivably agree to this treatment in the UK. If my mom ever heard about this, she’d might even wish she’d had this kind of opportunity. Ignoring all likely side-effects, a lot of expectant mothers could be easily taken in by people offering their child a normal, challenge-free life. Stupid mothers, but still.
    My parents wanted a daughter who would make them grandperents. What they got was a daughter who didn’t play with dolls or prams, hated other children, and now (as he’s being packed off the university to do a highly competetive degree in Literature), is coming out as trans and gay as well – hot damn! So much trouble could have been saved if she’d had access to this advanced science! I bet I would have kept on going to church too.

  19. Oh man, Just like assholes to obsess with behavioral traits in hypothetical people. Just grow a pair and raise your fucking kid. Yes raising an intersexed lesbian trucker will be a lot harder than raising some perfect version of yourself, but you know what I class that as? Pedophilia. Manipulating the sex of children is always wrong, Just let them be and raise them nicely.

    And to the people that can see the writing on the wall for the death of gays, yes we can be cured because we are born this way. We need to stop controlling kids BRAINS too. Not too many people squawk when someone mentions a cure for Autism, But Autism like being gay is just a different way of living and thinking.

    Man, Gattaca should be forced viewing or banned.

  21. Can you imagine the discussion in the waiting room?

    “Hey honey… how about we try a new experimental drug on our kid while you are pregnant with her to try to ensure she doesn’t one day have sex without a magnificent penis in the room… cause i think it’s totally normal to discuss/try to manipulate our future child’s adult sex life … See Morebefore she is born. I say we risk her health and yours to ensure that she is a slave to erections and wont want to have a job outside of the home. Perhaps we should also ask the doctor for some thalidomide for that nausea you have been having… then when you are feeling better we can discuss her sex life some more… maybe we can give her something to make sure she likes to have sex with guys with small dicks… just like you do, honey… now go fix daddy a gin and tonic… and take those damn pants off… dyke.”

    How is it that i have any faith left in humanity at all?

  23. Why do we humans feel we have to control (and inevitably fuck up) nearly everything?
    I read a book once about a pair of male twins, one of which underwent a botched circumcision, destroying the boy’s penis. So you know that the fucked up doctors told the boy’s grieving parents to do? Chop off what remains and turn him into a girl. Literally, lie to him and tell him he’s a girl, he always will be a girl, he always was a girl. Make him wear dresses, force him to play with dolls and TAKE ESTROGEN, asking, “Why don’t you bring a BOY to the prom, honey?” It’s fucking bullshit. The poor boy’s life was ruined, and ultimately, as a teenager his parents confessed and you know what he did? Yep, he got himself a penis and spent the rest of his life as a man.

    My point is: what the hell is wrong with having a child with abnormal genitals? Aren’t we taught to love our bodies? How can a parent willingly choose to destroy their child’s life by attempting to control who the child is NATURALLY and without their consent?

    In a morbid way, I kind of hope that these dex-treated babies turn out to be way worse than a gay or bi chick that works hard and doesn’t reproduce. Fuck with Mother Nature and she’ll kick your ass!

  24. @71 how about this conversation:

    “hey honey, why don’t we ensure this kid has no sex life and get it sucked out and thrown in the trash so we can get on with our lives?”

  25. Rogue PIs (Principal Investigators) unfortunately exist. A potential research subject needs to read a consent form as carefully as possible and weight the benefits and risks.

    Also, the word abnormal in a scientific paper has a different meaning than in other types of writing.

  26. I love how everyone is appalled that mothers might choose this treatment but if the same mother choses to have an abortion you’d all stand around and applaud.

  27. Dan,

    Are there numbers we can call to oppose this?

    Is there a specific progay group people can join to boycott this particular doctor and hospital?

    Or does one need to be formed?

  29. @77

    Boycott? I thought fetuses were just parasitic appendages to a female host and therefore subject to her every whim or convenience.

  30. This CFH condition is an inherited genetic abnormality. The clear answer is for people to get tested and then make their personal private choice.

  31. If a woman chooses to abort, the fetus does not have to live with life long consequences.
    We need a Facebook page against Dr. New!

  32. Advocates for Informed Choice is a non-profit organization advocating for the legal and human rights of children with intersex conditions or differences of sex development, like the ones in this story. We work in collaboration with bioethicists, doctors, parents, affected adults, and many others. If you are interested in taking action to help protect these children, and to be sure that possible human rights violations are investigated, please join our Facebook page at http://ow.ly/20wTY or sign up for our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/aiclegal. You can also donate to support our work at http://aiclegal.org/we-need-your-support…

  34. This use of an “anti-virilising” drug to “pre-treat” incipient lesbianism is pure quackery, since the level of “virilisation” in women has no correlation to sexual orientation other than in the depraved minds of homophobes with a fixation on crude stereotypes. Women arrive on this earth in all varieties, from delicate flowers to brawny bull wrestlers, and one can’t tell by looking at them whether they’re raging heterosexuals or gold-star lesbians. Period.

    The drug does have legitimate obstetric uses:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethaso…

    The two legitimate reasons are, as pointed to above, to help mature the lungs of a foetus when premature delivery is imminent, and to treat CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which can cause anomalous virilisation of the *external* genitalia and can *also* be a life-threatening disease that can cause the death of the foetus or baby.

    As the article mentions, the long-term effects on both mother and child are unknown, but the short-term effects on the mother can be severe,. Few mothers I know would hesitate to risk harm to their health for the sake of the life of their unborn child, but to take a similar risk in order to conform to religious hysteria seems profoundly silly. Of course, the one may well imply the other.

  35. This use of an “anti-virilising” drug to “pre-treat” incipient lesbianism is pure quackery, since the level of “virilisation” in women has no correlation to sexual orientation other than in the depraved minds of homophobes with a fixation on crude stereotypes. Women arrive on this earth in all varieties, from delicate flowers to brawny bull wrestlers, and one can’t tell by looking at them whether they’re raging heterosexuals or gold-star lesbians. Period.

    The drug does have legitimate obstetric uses:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethaso…

    The two legitimate reasons are, as pointed to above, to help mature the lungs of a foetus when premature delivery is imminent, and to treat CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which can cause anomalous virilisation of the *external* genitalia and can *also* be a life-threatening disease that can cause the death of the foetus or baby.

    As the article mentions, the long-term effects on both mother and child are unknown, but the short-term effects on the mother can be severe,. Few mothers I know would hesitate to risk harm to their health for the sake of the life of their unborn child, but to take a similar risk in order to conform to religious hysteria seems profoundly silly. Of course, the one may well imply the other.

  36. This use of an “anti-virilising” drug to “pre-treat” incipient lesbianism is pure quackery, since the level of “virilisation” in women has no correlation to sexual orientation other than in the depraved minds of homophobes with a fixation on crude stereotypes. Women arrive on this earth in all varieties, from delicate flowers to brawny bull wrestlers, and one can’t tell by looking at them whether they’re raging heterosexuals or gold-star lesbians. Period.

    The drug does have legitimate obstetric uses:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethaso…

    The two legitimate reasons are, as pointed to above, to help mature the lungs of a foetus when premature delivery is imminent, and to treat CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which can cause anomalous virilisation of the *external* genitalia and can *also* be a life-threatening disease that can cause the death of the foetus or baby.

    As the article mentions, the long-term effects on both mother and child are unknown, but the short-term effects on the mother can be severe,. Few mothers I know would hesitate to risk harm to their health for the sake of the life of their unborn child, but to take a similar risk in order to conform to religious hysteria seems profoundly silly. Of course, the one may well imply the other.

  37. Sorry about reposting the above. My browser got into a strange frozen state in which it seemingly wouldn’t respond.

    Dang!

  38. Pardon my ungentlemanly-language, but…

    RAGE! Fuck this fucking shit! This pissed me off so much that I had difficulty skimming through the article.

    This is… No. Just no. This needs to be made illegal NOW.

  39. This is SOO wrong. So, you’re saying, that just because i’m one of the girls that doesn’t want kids, and who likes football and “masculine” things, I’m sick? WTF

  41. This is part of a phenomenon I’ve noticed, whereby “well-meaning” parents who don’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay (or short, or big-clitted, or unusual in some way, etc) per se are nevertheless afraid of the “stigma” that comes with such things. After all, even though they themselves are OK with it, the outside world isn’t. And they are afraid of “exposing” their child to the cruelty of other kids, and so on. Perhaps they remember their own childhoods, the pain of being taunted by some little asshole on the playground, and they just can’t bear the thought of their kids going through the same thing.

    So instead of sucking it up as parents and actually imparting a sense of self-worth to their child despite his or her differences, they succumb to fear and end up perpetuating the exact “stigma” they supposedly had no problem with themselves. In other words, they let the little asshole on the playground win.

    Parenthood is not for the weak. If you wanna go through life with your tail tucked between your legs, that’s fine. But for God’s sake, don’t have any fucking kids.

  42. Becky –
    I was one little girl who did have daydreams of being pregnant and having babies.

    Shockingly enough, I am also a big ol’ dyke.

  43. I cannot express my horror at this. My Mom was given DES (di-ethylstilbestrol back in the late ’40s early ’50s to prevent miscarriages. I have had two episodes of cervical cancer which may have resulted from this, my Mom died of breast cancer and two of my sisters are survivors of breast cancer. Yet they think giving steroidal hormones to pregnant women is a viable experiment? What the hell is wrong with these people! To use this drug for these reasons, these ‘”medical” people should be subjected to the worst torture imaginable!

    First do no harm indeed.

  44. As a DES Daughter whose mother was prescribed this first synthetic estrogen to prevent a miscarriage of Yours Truly, I have done some research on the range in intention of doctors who pushed this eventually-recalled wonder drug that was meant to create uber-female babies. Originally introduced in 1938, recalled in 1972 (with recall finally being completed in about 1980 – when drug stores were gone and maximum profits collected??), these drug lords created a domino effect of infertility, extraordinary rates of miscarriage, physical reproductive anomalies, sky rocketing rates of all reproductive cancers, and, in my case, zero interest in reproduction – easier for my emotions given the odds I’d be working against in successfully doing so not to mention the fact that all DES effects are passed on indefinitely down the genetic line. Nice going. No matter the intention of the drug makers or those blindly prescribing them, the slope is slippery and only points downward.

  46. Aren’t most endocrinologists male? Maybe Dr. Maria New is a lesbian with low maternal instincts, since she has gravitated to a”non-traditional female role.”?

  47. Feminists will be up in ARMS! Because this is then not just messing with bi or lesbian women , but with women who are straight but have no intention of living there lives as mothers and homemakers.

  48. I’d ask if this woman was insane, but the true horror is that she’s sane. I wonder if she’s the reincarnation of Dr. Josef Mengele?

  49. @84

    To be clear- we are talking only about CAH which is caused by excess androgens? Because according to wikipedia (that fountain of reliable knowledge) CAH caused by androgens can result in ambiguous genitals, infertility, puberty issues etc. whereas CAH developed from other causes can be life threatening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_…

    If that is the case, then this really is all about sexuality- in terms of physical development and mental and emotional preferences, which is very hard to justify. However if androgen-caused CAH could be life threatening, it would be a very tough choice for the mother- to potentially alter the development of your child emotionally, physically, and mentally in ways that would cause her to grow up as a very different person to who she would originally have been, or to risk life threatening complications as a result of CAH.

    But from my rudimentary understanding, the particular form of CAH which is being discussed in the article is specifically focused on sexual development, and is not life threatening?

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