Can hormone pills promote homosexuality during pregnancy?

Hormones in the womb could have an effect on later sexual behavior
In addition, women taking the hormone progesterone during pregnancy may have a long-term effect on their child's sexual orientation. This is the result of a US study recently published in the journal "Archives of Sexual Behavior". Accordingly, men and women of progesterone-treated mothers reported comparatively more frequently than not feeling heterosexual. Instead, they often defined themselves as bisexual or homosexual.

Progesterone controls the natural cycle
The sex hormone progesterone (also called "luteal hormone") is naturally produced both in the body of women and (to a lesser extent) by men. In women, among other things, it regulates the cycle and prepares the uterus for the implantation of a fertilized egg. During pregnancy, it performs a protective function by ensuring that the uterine muscles are relaxed and do not use premature labor. For this reason, it is often used, for example, to avoid complications such as miscarriage and premature birth.

Researchers have discovered that exposure to the hormone progesterone in the womb could potentially have a lasting effect on our sexuality. (Image: Romolo Tavani / fotolia.com)

A team of researchers led by June Reinisch of the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington has now discovered in a small study that the administration of additional progesterone during pregnancy may possibly have a long-term effect on the unborn child. Because the progesterone could possibly affect the subsequent sexual orientation.

Researchers examine data from 34 subjects
The researchers came to this assumption after evaluating the data of 17 female and male volunteers whose mothers had taken a progesterone preparation (lutocycline) during pregnancy to prevent a miscarriage. The 34 participants came from a Danish cohort study in the 1980s and were all born between 1959 and 1961 at the University Hospital Copenhagen (Denmark).

The men and women were compared to a carefully selected control group who had no prenatal contact with lutocycline or other hormonal drugs, but otherwise agreed with the study participants on the basis of 14 relevant physical, medical and socioeconomic factors. At the age of 20 the subjects of both groups were questioned about their sexual orientation, self-identification and their own sexual history.

One in five is not heterosexual
The comparison of the two groups showed that the men and women whose mothers had taken the additional hormone during pregnancy were significantly less likely than heterosexual, the researchers write in their report. One in five from this group defined themselves as bisexual or homosexual. Compared to the control group, it was also more likely that the subjects already had sexual experiences with the same sex and had already been attracted to their own or both sexes.

"We found that progesterone exposure is associated with increased non-heterosexual self-identification, sex-to-sex or both-sex attraction, and same-sex sexual behavior," the researchers report.

The role of the hormone needs further research
"The findings highlight the likelihood that prenatal exposure to progesterone can have long-term consequences on human sexual behavior," the researchers conclude. Now more studies with children of progesterone-treated mothers need to follow to learn more about the role of this hormone in human behavioral development, the researchers said. (No)