Baby born after womb transplant

I can't talk for other people but my concerns are based on all of the above. For me it's not a single issue concern.

My point was that a lot of people on here talk as if the decision to have children is usually (or should be) an altruistic or selfless one. It seems to me that most people choose to have children because they think it will bring them happiness and make their life better or more purposeful. Moreover, for people who want children, it’s a hugely powerful drive, and many people will go to great lengths to achieve it. So to criticise this woman for making a choice primarily motivated her desire to have a child feels unfair.

Second, I think there are some double standards at work. Many children are brought into the world in what some might consider less than ‘ideal’ circumstances. Use of donor gametes, single mothers, parents with mental health challenges, precarious living arrangements, those with genetically inherited health conditions, those who decide to proceed with a pregnancy after the foetus has been identified as having a condition such as Downs - in any of these cases, parents may decide to have a child knowing that it is likely to suffer a disadvantage of some kind. That is an intensely personal choice.

Just because in this case the route to having a child involves a new technology, people seem to be holding the woman to much higher standards in saying that it was selfish of her to do it when there could possibly be adverse health consequences for her baby.

i’m only talking about the objections based on the wellbeing of the baby, i know there are separate arguments based on the impact on the donor or on the use of scarce resources.

We cross posted. No problem.

Sorry you didnt quote a post or tag and it was after mine. You mentioned kudos again which is what I had replied about before.

I was responding to DisneyTokyoNewbie's point about the lack of research into women's general reproductive health issues and their prevention as opposed to new ART techniques, but if you don't think there is a debate to be had about that that is up to you.

Well just you carry on thinking negatively then.

As I said before there is a huge amount of prestige and kudos associated with new ART techniques, they make headlines, "New hope for childless couples", much more so than research into women's general reproductive health.

It's not about thinking there are no potential downsides, that would mean you live in airy fairy land. Only the surgeons know themselves how they feel but watching and listening to them being interviewed it was bloody obvious how passionate they were and lovely how they described there not being many dry eyes in the room when the baby was born.

I'm pretty sure the actual giving birth part has been happening without scientific intervention for at least a few million years 😁. I would also argue that the science behind my initial diagnosis posed no risk to the health of any other woman. I'm not anti-science. And I'm not anti-research. I am concerned about the ramifications of this surgery.

Many people on this thread have spoken about how few women will be getting this surgery - I think it's important for all of us to question why so much time, money, energy and risk has been poured into this when it might have been spent preventing diseases that cause total uterine failure. The research for women's health, in particular issues like endometriosis and fibroids is utterly woeful when you consider how many women are affected. Why are we not focussing on preventative measures rather than "curative"?

I don’t,no. The problem now is that there is so much money in the fertility business that ensuring it is done ethically is getting near to impossible. Surrogate farms, egg donor farms, IVF doctors using their own sperm to impregnate patients. Patients being charged for expensive add ons to their IVF that have no proven record of making any difference- there was a Panorama investigation into this, I think it’s still on YouTube. It’s difficult to address these if people keep insisting that anything goes when it comes to producing a baby.

This refusal to believe that nothing that results in the birth of a baby could possibly have any downside is very naive and dangerous. The scientists and surgeons involved won’t be doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts - there is a huge amount of kudos in it.

Indeed, so imagine how much more selfish it is to do this. The risk of loss of life, life long as of yet unknown complications, parents waiving anonymity for some reason so everyone will know and the emotional toll that could take; the list goes on. By your logic this is simply more selfish on top of an already selfish act as the issues you outlined are the same; so what point were you trying to make?

Too true. It's a shame when advancements in these fields for the benefit of women (albeit a small percentage of women) lead to people concentrating on the most negative potential outcomes possible. Any surgery we have now was at some point more risky when it was in its infancy. It's why surgeons and researchers constantly push forward to get better outcomes.

I'm very grateful to be alive now with women able to access a choice of contraception, legal abortion, IVF, now womb transplants and the list goes on. They all give women more and more freedom and options if they are unfortunate enough to need them. The world is changing, humans are changing, life is changing, it has always and will always happen.

It was science. Not luck.

Did you read the post? All the bits from diagnosis through surgeries to giving birth were the result of science, not luck.

🙄I should have said “whether it was science or luck”.

Whatever it was...

It was science. It wasn't dancing round the well. It wasn't novenas to Gérard of Magella. It wasn't sacrificing a goat. It was science.

Just like womb transplants.🤷‍♀️

Whatever it was, iIVF doesn’t work for everyone and it should be acknowledged that it is a double edged sword and can cause crushing heartbreak well as joy. Happy for you @DisneyTokyoNewbie though that it did work.

Which reasons confuse you?

I think it was both. Lots of women have the same procedures as me and don't get the same outcome.

It wasn't luck, it was science.

True

Thanks for your kind words. Many, many people have had a much more difficult journey to parenthood and some have never gotten there. I appreciate my luck. My opinions are not coming from a place of misogyny and I don't believe they are irrational. They are coming from a place of concern and enquiry. Which I think is how it should be.

One could argue that having a baby is always to an extent selfish, if you take some of this logic to its extreme. A baby can’t consent to be born, and you can never know what it may suffer in its life. Particularly given the terrible threats facing the world in the next hundred years.

I guess at least that’s consistent, even if completely incomprehensible to me!

A lot of mumsnetters do hate IVF, for similarly incoherent reasons to the ones we’ve seen on this post