When is a person's sex determined? Trump has no conception, experts say.
On his first day back in power, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on gender that essentially states that males become males and females become female “at conception.”
On his first day back in power, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on gender that essentially states that males become males and females become female “at conception.”
But that, medical experts say, is wrong.
All fertilized eggs or embryos are filled with both male Y and female X chromosomes, and the gender doesn’t reveal itself until weeks later, they said. And even then, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s a girl, a boy, or a baby with the sexual characteristics of both.
“We refer to conception as fertilization and nobody is male or female at fertilization,” said Dr. Eve Feinberg at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Everybody has some combination of X and Y chromosomes, but it’s not until nine to 13 weeks that the differentiation of sex organs begins to develop, which is not always a binary ‘male’ or ‘female’ pathway.”
Titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” Trump’s order purports to be a broadside against “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex” and those who have “used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women” and barge into everything from “women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.”
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