In the ’80s a tiny article tucked away in the corner of my morning newspaper caught my eye and my imagination. It was about how scientists were experimenting with taking eggs from two separate cows, combining them in a petri dish and then, using a process that would leave the bulls out of the picture, create embryos, implant them, and bring the calves to term. Using two eggs, a calf would always be female, which was the point, and for practical reasons. The cow mamas chosen would both be “good milkers.” Apparently, cows differ in this talent, and they’re born with it, so the calf would be a “super milker.” This news item, coming while abortion culture was in full throttle, with powerhouse feminists like Gloria Steinem (who’s gonna argue with her!) promoting the “abortion is female empowerment” angle, made a hard landing on my consciousness because of the irony: Abortion power? What about pregnancy power?

I wanted to know more, specifically, and germane to my abortion v. pregnancy angle: Was this possible only for cows? In those days you didn’t have Google, you had the Yellow Pages. So I looked up Dairy Science, which brought me to Rutgers University in New Jersey, Department of Animal Science Agriculture Experiment Station and ultimately to one Professor Larry S. Katz. The newspaper article was very brief, and I asked him to fill in the details, my “credentials” being I was writing a play that was a feminist take-off on Animal Farm (I lied). It must have been a slow day at Rutgers because he was accommodating. I asked him what the process was, just scramble eggs and you’re in business? He explained that life occurs when two sets of chromosomes are combined, that the ovum is a complete set, sperm is incomplete, but when combined with the ovum’s full set, you’re in business. Sperm determines the sex (think of all those poor queens losing their heads because they didn’t produce a son!) and since the “super milker” folks only wanted females, they didn’t want to risk sperm changing the outcome. So, after the cow eggs are combined a little zap of electricity initiates cellular division (shades of Frankenstein) and Voila! A girl calf from lady cows. Had it actually been done? He said it was a clinical possibility, but he wasn’t sure if anyone had succeeded. Could it be done with human females? Yes, presuming it gets past the clinical stage for cows.

I don’t know if a super milker calf was ever produced. Around that time cloning became the hot new science to pursue, so all the grant money probably went there. Too bad. Super milkers would provide high protein food; cloning’s main commercial benefit seems to be letting rich people reproduce their pets.

Now if, God forbid, a disease swept the earth that rendered all males sterile, including newborns, women could keep things going until a cure was found. However, if all females became infertile, and it was up to the guys to carry on, the human race would be extinct within a generation. But abortion is power?

Then again, fertility can also be a weapon. In the ’90s, when radical feminism was perhaps at its most woolly-headed, a manifesto was brought to my attention. It was kitchen-table publishing, a bunch of xeroxed pages stapled together, but one of the articles was alarming, as in alarmingly stupid and callous. Since the population was reliably about 49 percent male and 51 percent female, the way for women to “take over” would be to abort all male babies, the goal being to change the ratio to 30 percent male and 70 percent female. How those numbers were arrived at is anyone’s guess. Just keep 30 percent of the puppy dog tails around to kill the big bugs and change the flat tires? That proportion would provide sufficient gene pool diversity? Hmm. Sounds like a possible plethora of half-siblings marching down the aisle. I think Mother Nature got it right the first time, about 50/50 works just fine.

BTW, if any of those woolly-headed feminists still haunting Kinkos and cranking out their manifestos happen upon this blog and jump for joy at the prospect of leaving men out of the equation, be careful what you wish for because . . . men could do this too. They would always need a woman at some point, so not quite as autonomous, but they could do it. The zygote is removed from each sperm sample, a woman’s egg is hollowed out and the zygotes inserted. The outer layer of the ovum has some genetic material, so girl stuff is always there a little bit. The make-shift embryo would then be implanted in a Rented Womb and brought to term. This process, like any IVF, would be very, very expensive. And Men Have More Money. So there’s that. And a baby from two Papas might have more commercial value, such as military applications. Super milkers? How about super soldiers?

Okay, so maybe female to female reproduction lacks the same level of commercial value vis-à- vis Pentagon budgets, and the aforementioned theoretical and unlikely doomsday scenario of keeping the human race from going extinct is really all it’s good for (unless there’s a top-secret plan for an army of wet nurses). But in this age of the conceptual replacing the actual in everything from virtual reality friendships to the airy “gender identity” jurisdiction in government regulatory bodies making “mis-gendering” a civil offense, dang it girlfriends, even the potential to be the ones, and the only ones, who could save humankind from extinction if necessary is a big deal! Choose your weapon? Choose your frame of mind!