U.K. first womb transplant

[VestaTilley]

The BBC has reported today that the first womb transplant has taken place in a hospital in England. A 40 year old woman donated her womb to her sister, hopefully enabling her to have children.

AIBU to be concerned about a potential dystopian future where women’s reproductive organs are harvested like car parts?

Journalists are treating this like it’s a positive, with few questions being asked about how the donor is recovering, how the foetus (if the recipient does conceive) will fare if the woman has to continue taking immuno suppressive drugs? Whether there is increased miscarriage risk?

Transplants are supposed to be life saving, not about wish fulfilment. Apparently 10 brain dead women are being lined up for future donation!

To me this all seems part of a bigger picture of surrogacy, synthetic embryo creation (reported earlier this year) and a drive to disassociate women from reproduction and the biology of our sex.

Am I alone in being bothered by this? I wish journalists would look more at the bigger societal picture.

Link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66514270

My sister can't have children due to her uterus being the wrong shape to sustain a pregnancy. Everything else is fine, she just can't physically hold a pregnancy, which is devastating for her.

My womb is in full working order, but I CERTAINLY won't be having any more children. Absolutely no chance whatsoever.

I'd happily donate mine to her, if it were safe for both of us, a reliable option and feasible to do so. I wouldn't be a surrogate for her, due to medication that I have to take being potentially dangerous for a pregnancy (research has just been completed on this, it wasn't known during my two pregnancies) but if I could help her, I absolutely would.

I can absolutely see the concern about this, and do agree with it, but I also see her upset at being unable to have children. It's a difficult one.

I agree, they can take anything that can be used for a genuine medical reason. But I fundamentally disagree with this.

This is very concerning. I removed myself from the donor list because you can;t specify you don't want reproductive organs removed and I definitely don;t want to be part of womb transplant. There are too many valid concerns around it and, for me, I don't think this is what we should spend resources and money on just so someone can have a biological baby. There are a lot of babies on this earth already without families. As others say, it won't be too long before poorer women are being paid so rich ladies can take their wombs, like renting a 'surrogate' ( horrible term for a woman ).

I’m guessing the majority of journalists and editors are men and have not been able or willing to consider the impact on women in the future.

As a few PPs have said, this is not a new thing and Transwomen are already agitating for uterus transplants to be made available to them

One particularly vile specimen has said he wants to be pregnant so that he can have the uniquely female experience of having an abortion. 🤮

It's not currently possible of course and probably never will be but who knows?

And I assume, after a decade, that womb trafficking is already occurring. I'd be more surprised if it wasn't.

Exactly, It's hardly a back street procedure is it?

Good grief, a simple google will tell you that the first organ trafficking trial in the U.K. concerned the illegal transplant of kidneys from a trafficked man from Lagos and was carried out in The Royal Free Hospital private renal unit. No one (despite the, weirdly moronic, PP you quoted implying they are) is suggesting they will be carried out in the dead of night on the streets of London.

As long as it’s only ever done with consent of both women or their next of kin in certain situations I don’t have a problem with it.
if my womb - that is not much use to me now I have my family complete - can help another woman have her own baby then I’d sign it to her. But I’m also a supporter of surrogacy in certain situations and I don’t feel that procreating is an essential part of being a woman, being me. but when I chose to have a family, it came easy to my body and I’ve watched friends and family who haven’t found it easy or haven’t managed it and if I could have helped them I would. So yes I’d donate my womb if there was a want or need for it.

I am honestly so depressed at how many people on here appear to have had the ultimate knee jerk reaction and removed themselves completely from the organ donor list.

So you won’t be accepting one either, should you unfortunately need it for some reason then? And the people who might have been saved by your heart/lungs/kidney/liver etc well bollocks to them anyway because at least now your womb definitely won’t be transplanted into a man!

Looks like quite a few have.

It was inevitable really. This is pretty horrifying. We all know what will be the next Frankenstein experiment.

If they change it to add "female reproductive organs" on the optional list then id gladly go back on it.

Nah any rich people using surrogates is most likely because they cba to go through pregnancy, now men wanting to get pregnant, different story

Absolutely organ harvesting is a real thing, but I don't see anyone arguing that we should stop kidney/lung/heart/liver transplants because there has been trafficking of those organs.

I was ambivalent about having children anyway, and had got used to the idea that it would never happen.

I don't think having a child improved my life in any way. It changed my life, not for better or worse. It just became different.

It might be a knee jerk reaction according to you- but it is telling how much this has created a visceral reaction.

And as i said, you can opt back in. It's simple and online.

And no, I will not take an organ. That is always something i have felt for myself. Although has not been tested as yet. But I always thought I would not take an organ but would probably give one if need be. For me, for now - until you can reliably be sure that a womb will not be harvested then i am out.

This isn't true FYI. Journalism is absolutely full of women.

I've been opted out of organ donation since they made it an opt-out system. Very glad I did.

Oh god. That seems dystopian.

will we go so far as to allow surrogacy with braindead surrogates?
basically use the wombs of brain dead women to incubate babies? Pay their family some sort of rental fee?

yes, yes, pearl clutching, slippery slope, yadi yada. But this seems honestly terrible to me!!

These ‘wombless’ women can have children, just not biological children.

I find this disgusting. It’s incredibly worrying.

Interesting how men’s bollocks aren’t being taken/transplanted.

As an organ recipient, who would not be alive today without donation, I would just ask that anyone considering removing themselves from the donor register because of this to discuss it with the donor register and their family. There is an option to select what you donate I.e. heat only etc which would possibly solve this specific issue for you.

i firmly believe that organ donation is a gift and a choice (either way) and should not be judged BUT, please make you family aware of your wishes so that they can fulfil them knowing what you want… don’t leave them with difficult decisions and possible regrets because of not knowing what your wishes are (whatever they are) at a difficult time for them.

Yes this is a good point. I will discuss with DH.

"So you won’t be accepting one either, should you unfortunately need it for some reason then?"

Nope, id accept a critical, life saving organ gladly while at the same time being somewhat sad that I had to come off the register due to the way it is currently set up. Hopefully it will change so I can go back on it (although other half has made it clear he'd refuse so decision out of my hands anyway by the sounds of it 🙄)

will we go so far as to allow surrogacy with braindead surrogates?
basically use the wombs of brain dead women to incubate babies?

Already been suggested.
https://healthnews.com/news/brain-dead-women-should-be-used-as-surrogates-report-suggests/#:~:text=Professor%20Anna%20Smajdor%20from%20the,it%20being%20a%20disturbing%20project.

This is what concerns me, along with the illegal harvesting prospect.
Think about it, not that many years ago, Joe public would never have thought that a man could be surgically transformed into a woman ( and vice versa of course ) but it's happened.
Now we're told of womb transplants, so based on the above, what's to say that it will be impossible at some point in the future for a man to receive a womb and everything else needed with it.
After all, up until steptoe did the first test tube babies, no one would have thought it possible that an infertile woman could become pregnant, now IVF is a common thing.
So realistically, in the future there is nothing to say that womb transplants wont be advanced enough to transplant into a bio male.
That is a worrying aspect.
Every surgical organ transplant was originally thought that it couldn't be done, it was a pipedream. However, as we know that through scientists and medical teams, it can be done, and very successfully too.
Heart, lung, kidneys, liver, corneas, even face and hand transplants.
So yes, I believe that in the future they will find a way to successfully transplant a womb into a bio man and that worries me for the future women.

Most of those would address a disability though. Infertility isn't a disability.

@PumpkinsAndCoconuts brain dead people who are organ donors have been used for organs for decades. For hearts and lungs and eyes, faces and hands and kidneys and livers and veins with their families permission.

It's literally no different with this one! It would be a huge jump from organ donation to living incubator and one that is miles away from each other ethically.

It might not happen in the UK, but China has form for illegal organ harvesting and Chinese scientist have pioneered uterus transplants into males (rats) by parasitically attaching the male rat to a female in order to sustain a pregnancy.

What's to stop a wealthy British male taking an extended trip to China to receive such experimentally treatment.

They could always use the brain dead women (they're dead anyway) as the surrogate hormone supply for the pregnant male, or a fully conscious poor women (can't remember which ethic minority China currently has locked up in concentration camps) or political dissident, with no say in the matter.

Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should, and just because it might not happen on British soil doesn't mean we shouldn't debate it and shout out against it.