The news this morning of the failure of the first American uterine transplant does nothing to reverse the fact that they've done it in Sweden. Science will only respect national borders for so long. (Turns out the difference is that we're using dead donors, they're using live ones, who have some complications. But the babies are being born nonetheless.)

Nine years ago—before my uterus and my schedule were willingly overtaken by babies of both the bio and step varieties—I wrote a piece I'd wanted to read but couldn't find anywhere. I asked, simply, where are we on male pregnancy, medically and socially?

I had the perfect candidate! I announced. My then-partner "would be a great father"!

I was laboring under the delusion that a man who spends many years "not sure" whether he wants a child will decide to become a father.

In retrospect, it's obvious to see that I was like a troubled bride of a certain stripe, obsessing about every last detail of a wedding (a pregnancy, the pre-event) in order to avoid thinking about the years of marriage to come (parenthood itself). The partnership did not survive the trouble.

I went on to marry, to be pregnant, and to carpool. Did my own pregnancy change my views on whether men should be able to partake? Yes and no, and ultimately, I'm not that interested in what I think.

I'm fascinated rather by what I still believe to be the absolute eventuality of male pregnancy.

Who will be first? When? Who will object, and on which grounds? In my story, Christians objected, libertarians supported, a gay male friend objected, Arnold Schwarzenegger mocked. Is a cabal of Swedish cis-men already plotting a future of gestation? In a world of greater trans awareness, does it even matter?

Okay, here is just a little bit of what I think: When I was giving birth, I came across a painting in the hospital corridor by Gwen Knight Lawrence, of a pregnant woman in profile, calm. I was not calm. I was laboring and vomiting on the linoleum. But that painting set something into motion that continued all the way through the birth. I saw my ancestors. All the women, all the way back. It sounds nuts, and I would not have expected it, but I spent my labor worshiping my female ancestors.

Was I worshiping some essentialist view of the female body as a babymaking machine? Would a pregnant man worship science?

Maybe these questions are a continued form of fantastic denial, so I'll wrap this up rather than running away with the details of machinery. My kids will need a ride soon, anyway.