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

Using the term 'hysterical', eh?

Ironic - look up the origin of the word. Or connect the dots - hysterical, hysterectomy.

Also I agree with you on coercion - it's a very real problem no matter which organ you're transplanting when the donor and recipient have a relationship to each other, familial or otherwise.

There are existing safeguards in place that will apply here too, but for example in the case of parents donating a kidney to their child, there's a very real possibility that that donation could be motivated by fear of losing their spouse rather than desire to help their child. There is a point at which the responsibility of a medical professional to accetain motivation and consent has to end however, and a level of trust has to be placed that people and women in particular are able to advocate for themselves.

When you start disbeliving a woman who is telling you she is acting with free will and aim to override her consent, I think you come full circle and start rolling down a very steep hill indeed.

I think for me, any donation, harvest or commercialization of women’s reproductive organs or eggs is inevitably going to lead to exploitation. That includes surrogacy. Womens reproductive autonomy is limited, controlled and constantly under threat (birth control, abortion, access to cesarean sections and pain relief during labour). Whist this sort of highly risky surgery to enable birth at all costs is applauded. That doesn’t add up for me.

Regarding the comments about men pushing for womb transplants. I think there is a genuine fear that trans rights activists will take advantage of this sort of so called progress, to push male rights to what has previously been female exclusive biology and lived experience. We’ve already seen the huge impact TRA ideology has had for example in the push for sex change medicine and surgical intervention on children. So not a surprise this is being raised as a concern.

I'm not sure etymology is the smoking gun you think it is here... the meaning of words changes all the time. I would use hysterical to describe the behaviour of a man in the same way I would use it to describe the behaviour of a woman as I think many people would. I'm happy to use the term swivel-eyed if you prefer? or unhinged? raving? Happy to adapt my langauage in any way you'd like, the point still stands.

I'm happy to use the term swivel-eyed if you prefer? or unhinged? raving?

You seem nice.

Exactly this.

I don’t quite understand how that researcher declaring that it may be possible in coming decades, and the research project done already, can be denied as ‘the fact (immutable) remains that there is no suggestion of transplanting a womb into a biological man’.

@SunsetBeauregarde re your comment

"As I’ve said, I’m completely gender critical"

Just chipping in again to say that your first (rude) post directed at GC women here was this:

“No one is making any suggestion that men will receive wombs. This is because medically that’s a nonsense and if the anti trans brigade took some time to understand their own biology given they’re so obsessed with it, they’d know this.”

You also said "this!" to another post calling me a terf. So no, you are not "gender critical", are you. Don't be disingenuous or lie, it's not really in the spirit of a good faith discussion.

I agree with your first point. That said, my lovely friend concieved her DD via egg donation. I think this may be why I feel differently about it than I do womb donation - it's also the less invasive nature of the undertaking too. Then naturally my question is whether men feel the same way about sperm donation? Less invasive proceedure again obviously so I wonder whether that's the difference?

I agree with you though that if I object to womb donation in any capacity then I need to examine why I don't feel my friend did anything 'wrong' or exploititive when she used another womans egg to fullfil her desire to become a parent.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9908667/amp/Jessica-Alves-travels-Brazil-transgender-woman-womb-transplant.html

Naive and maybe vulnerable.

If you knew anything about it, you'd know there's an enormous difference between being gender critical and being anti trans. Equally, gender critical and 'terfy' are totally different things.

I have no issues. I'd donate mine as a living donor. One previous owner free to good home! I'd also be a surrogate for someone if it was thier egg etc. I see no issue if the correct consent is given!

And you are very clearly neither. No gender critical feminist would call another gender critical feminist "obsessed with her own biology". That is genderist speak.

The linked article literally says this.

Naive and maybe vulnerable.

Indeed, some of the males who fall for this are vulnerable, like Alves.

I agree with your first point. That said, my lovely friend concieved her DD via egg donation. I think this may be why I feel differently about it than I do womb donation - it's also the less invasive nature of the undertaking too. Then naturally my question is whether men feel the same way about sperm donation? Less invasive proceedure again obviously so I wonder whether that's the difference?

It's less invasive than womb donation because that obviously requires major surgery. It's massively more invasive than sperm donation. Please watch this, anyone who isn't aware of how exploitative this industry is, and the risk to women.

https://cbc-network.org/eggsploitation/

My nephew was born via donor egg IVF. He's wonderful, but I can still think this and at the same time believe that harvesting eggs from less well off women in exchange for cut price IVF is exploitation and commercialisation. But I also understand the despair and desperation that my sibling and spouse were going through for such a long time, so understand that they were not best placed to weigh up the mortality of something being legally offered that could fix their problems and give them a much wanted baby. But that doesn't mean the ethics of these practices shouldn't be debated.

If you knew anything about it, you'd know there's an enormous difference between being gender critical and being anti trans. Equally, gender critical and 'terfy' are totally different things.

Do elaborate @SunsetBeauregarde

Because discussion and speculation are very different from suggesting a womb transplant into a man. Semantics, but important to make that distinction. Another example of this was in the 1885 when scientists suggested cloning could apply to humans routinely at some point in the future. There was a rush of advancements in the technology given the implications it had for organ transplants, stem cell research etc right through to the 1990's. When it became scientifically possible to actually clone a human embryo, 30 countries banned it outright and 15 banned it for reproduction but allowed it for thereputic purposes (the uk is in the second category). Now that was at the point where the science supported that it was entirely possible to do, decades after the initial summation that it may at some point happen in the future. To date there has never been a case of human cloning either in a country that has banned or still allows it.

To put the current discussion into that context, there is no indication at the moment that transplanting a womb into a man would be in any way viable. We are no where near that. At the moment, we are those victorian scientists standing around pontificating that it 'could' be possible, and granted science moves much faster these days but we're still no where near the possibility of a womb transplant into a biological man. Personally, I don't think we ever will be.

No and I agree - the ethics of this proceedure needs proper debate with the exclusion of the trans element i think, as that muddies the waters. The complex ethics of woman to woman womb/ egg transfer is charged and interesting enough I feel, and this is where the focus should be given that it's actually a possibility.

On what? the difference between being anti-trans and gender critical?

All of it if you please!

Thank you so much for pointing this out. I absolutely do not consent for a man to take my womb.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/23/womb-transplants-biological-men-pregnant-giving-birth/

No womb transplants into men? Think again.

As you say, that is your personal belief.