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When it comes to same‐sex couples turning to synthetic gametes, A. J. Newson and Anna Smajdor say ‘new ethical questions’ arise, ‘such as whether same‐sex couples should be able to access this technology to have children who are genetically related to them both’.⁶ I fully concede that the prospect of same‐sex couples as the genetic parents of children is a novel question, but the question of cross‐sex gamete production is not any more novel for them than for anyone else. If synthetic gametes become possible, any man or woman can be the source of sperm or ova no matter what kind of relationship they are in. Yet Newson and Smajdor do not treat the use of synthetic gametes for infertile opposite‐sex couples as a specifically ethical concern; they certainly do not frame the question of synthetic gametes for opposite‐sex couples as a question of access, presumably because they assume these couples to be fit as parents in all the ways that matter. In regard to same‐sex couples, Newson and Smajdor go on to ask ‘Will a man whose DNA is contained in the egg (used to produce a child) be recognised as a “biological” mother?’ (see page 186 from Newson et al.⁶). By contrast, they ask no parallel question of ethics and access for their own example of single men or women who might rely on their own sperm and synthetic ova to produce a child. In any case, why assume that a man whose synthesised ovum is used to produce a child cannot be recognised as the child’s mother in a biological sense even as he retains a male identity? After all, one transgender man who gestated his own children expresses no doubts about being the children’s father.⁷ Techniques of fertility preservation for transgender men and women – preserving gametes prior to body modifications that would otherwise leave people infertile – are likely to increase the ranks of transgender men who are the genetic mothers of their children, and the ranks of transgender women who are the genetic fathers of their children.⁸ Rather than trying to retrofit all parents into mutually exclusive categories of mother and father, why not ask a more searching question, namely whether these categories offer an adequate vocabulary for expressing the relationships progenitors can have with their progeny?

Other discussions also represent the parenthood of gay men and lesbians as ethically controversial. In 2009, a study group of scientists, ethicists, journal editors and lawyers reviewed the science of synthetic gametes and suggested likely uses, some of which they said might require legal and policy oversight. This group indicated that the possibility of using synthetic gametes for reproduction in same‐sex couples is unlikely in the future, for genetic reasons related to conception and embryogenesis.⁹ Even so, their analysis does not rule out same‐sex reproduction as impossible. Perhaps for that reason, the group went on to say ‘same‐sex reproduction is inarguably a controversial, if highly unlikely, potential end result of this research’ (see page 13 from Mathews et al.⁹). The study group, therefore, identifies this kind of reproduction as ‘requiring deliberation and possible policy options’ (see table 1 from Mathews et al.).

This interpretation of same‐sex reproduction as ‘inarguably controversial’ comes without any supporting rationale. By contrast, the study group did feel obliged to offer a rationale after describing other novel uses of synthetic gametes, such as the in vitro creation of human embryos for research that involves their destruction. The group noted that those practices offend people ‘who imbue such embryos with full moral status’ (see page 12 from Mathews et al.). By contrast, the idea that two men or two women conceive and raise a child together is represented as self‐evidently controversial, requiring no supporting explanation at all.

Interpretations like these treat same‐sex couples as a novelty act in bioethics, primarily by suggesting that their moral standing as parents requires levels of moral scrutiny not required of other parents. At the very least, discussions like these still suppose that someone – moral and social authorities – have to function as gatekeepers for homosexual men and women wanting to be parents, as against assuming in advance that any safe and effective treatment for infertility should be presumptively available to any adult, which is the entitlement these commentators confer without qualification on opposite‐sex couples, subject only to the constraints of safety and efficacy of the intervention in question.