Baby born from dead donor womb transplant in UK first

There's nothing mentioned about womb donation.

When this happened the woman didn't even know that donation of her womb was a possibility.

Her family agreeing for her isn't enough.

They need to add this to the list on the organ donation register so women can make their own decisions.

The donor would have consented to organ donation.

It’s like saying that a heart donor didn’t consent to their heart being abused. You can’t dictate what happens to the organs once you’ve agreed to donate them. You donate on the understanding that they will use whatever viable organs they can, in whichever way they’re needed.

I think it's horrible. Nobody ever seems to think how the child will feel about it. I'd hate to discover I had Frankenstein-esque origins like this, just awful.

That's not true. They only use the organs you've not withdrawn consent for, and (at the moment) only a select few organs are available to consent to.

The donor would have consented to organ donation.

It’s like saying that a heart donor didn’t consent to their heart being abused. You can’t dictate what happens to the organs once you’ve agreed to donate them. You donate on the understanding that they will use whatever viable organs they can, in whichever way they’re needed.

Ask a baby who has been born into such grim medical chaos how they feel. I only know being born of two consenting adults, and even then it was an unhappy outcome.

Do you genuinely, actually believe that they’re going to kill women for their wombs?

The women in question did not consent to donating her womb. Her family decided to donate it for her.

Agree.

It's another way of dehumanising women.

Lots already get pressured/ supported to give up their eggs.

It's just another way of pressurising women to be kind.

The woman who gave up her womb did not consent to this procedure. Her family made that decision for her.

And the doctors just want to be the first so they can have their names in the history books.

Depending on the advances in this field over the next 10 years it'll become a lot clearer what the dangers to women from this procedure are.

We do not have non consensual organ harvesting.

I’m much less worried about womb transplants than I am about those sperm donation Facebook groups where men (whether genuine well-meaning or breeding fetishists) can donate their untested semen to women who want to get pregnant, and there’s no limit on how many women they can inseminate. That’s going to blow-up in the next few years and you’ll see clusters of children with genetic health conditions popping up in specific areas, and then later on down the line people will be dating their sibling and not realising. That could genuinely be harmful.

Womb-transplants, in which consent has been gained from the donor before death and the pregnancy is managed by consultants and the process is regulated by health agencies, resulting in a much wanted babies who don’t need to go through the trauma of being ripped away from the mum (like they experience in surrogacy) - really isn’t concerning to me in comparison to what I have mentioned above.

Its well documented that donor recipients can suffer psychological effects following transplants, therefore it’s safe to assume that babies born either through surrogacy or via uterus transplants might experience the same sort of effects as they grow up.
https://www.kidney.org.uk/looking-to-the-future-the-emotional-impact-following-a-kidney-transplant

I made it clear that I feel it is different, on an emotional level. That's just how I feel, not a statement of fact or a claim that it is different.

And even leaving the ovaries intact, hysterectomy raises the risk of prolapse, premature menopause, and early dementia (off the top of my head). It is a major operation to go through, with more serious, long-lasting potential effects for the donor than a kidney transplant.

Plus, women are uniquely at risk of being trafficked, coerced, financially pressured, or even just socially pressured - 'you've finished your family, how can you withhold the joy of children from your sister??' - into undertaking this risky operation. Just look at surrogacy and egg donation, and how on a global scale it's resulted in many women being held prisoner, used like breeding animals.

The potential misuses are ethically concerning to me.

This is just 8j the UK.

People can perform less ethical surgeries abroad

Well neither do they really for a vagina.

I just see it as another objective men would want to have, to be able to (falsely) assert they really are female.

And given that there are some in the medicial profession who would happily, if paid enough try and find a way to achieve this, who knows.

!

As far as I can tell it hasn’t been attempted yet. The charities have only been given legally binding permission to do it on women, and they have stated they cannot and will not be taking part in this type of procedure for the “foreseeable future”

https://wombtransplantuk.org/fact-sheet/the-potential-for-operations-for-transgender-women

Some of the recipients of donated wombs will have been born without a functioning womb and others will have lost their womb as a result of serious medical conditions including endometriosis and cancer.
These two approved series of operations, which follow over 25 years of ethically approved and exhaustive clinical research, must be completed and then carefully evaluated, and peer reviewed, strictly in line with the provisions of our permissions.
The UK Womb Transplant Research Team is fully aware and respectful of the 2010 Gender Equality Act that mandates equal care for transgender women, assuming technical feasibility. However it is abundantly clear from all recent experience and research that technical feasibility for a safe and successful operation for a transgender female, together with the possibility of sustaining a successful pregnancy, does not currently exist and that many years of detailed medical research will be required before this might become a viable and safe option.

fascinating, why would you care? Would you feel the same if your mother had received a blood transfusion while pregnant with you? how about a new kidney?

But it should give us pause to wonder about what the potential future trajectories of this may be.

When things are possible but in short supply - who tends to benefit? Who tends to suffer?

I don’t think anyone has ever said that the supply out strips demand. I think the reason to highlight that number is that this has the potential for so many people to be helped.