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 belief is that your sex is immutable, but you can proclaim your gender as anything you like - it should never change your rights to access anything, because the world should be sex, not gender based. I am therefore highly critical of gender based arguments, or gender based ideology that's based on feeling and floaty concepts with no grounding in reality. I think laws should be written in stone based on concrete, undisutable facts and I don't think gender can ever be that - hence, gender critical. I don't identify myself in any way as 'anti-trans' because I'm not - I meet a lot of trans people through my work and I wouldn't say I'm 'anti' any of them. Even the ones with very different views to mine. They are entitled to those feelings, I just don't think we should be taking feelings into account when we're making laws that impact everyone. I also don't identify myself as a TERF because there's nothing radical in my views and I try my best to stay away from the more extreme edges of the trans debate, given that as with anything, the edges are where the extremists are.”

Nothing ‘radical’ in your views? Here we seem to have a confusing use of ‘radical’. Radical Feminism comes from the use of ‘radical’ meaning from the root of and reformist. Not ‘extreme’.

What you have just written could have been written by many posters on the FWR board and some posters on this very thread. TERF has been acknowledged as a slur. And currently the term ‘anti-trans’ is applied to exactly the sentiments you have written here above.

from a previous post

”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 have written ‘anti-trans’ in at least one post previously such as above, yet you reject it for yourself. Do you somehow think posters here are writing because they are ‘anti’ trans? That we don’t have trans people in our lives as you do, that we love and like? Because if that is what you think, that there is your own prejudice against a group of women and your belief in their motivations and their knowledge.

There have been articles and papers written recently that have been designed to wedge open the ethics of males receiving uteruses and to discuss the desires of some male people to have them. This to me is ‘anti-trans’ because I don’t believe that hope should be given to these people for something that can never be achieved where that male body can build a fetus to deliver a fully developed and healthy infant. Yet you have used ‘anti-trans brigade’, a derogatory term used to dehumanise women who believe mostly what you believe.

And obsessed by biology? Feminists aren’t ‘obsessed’ by biology. Again with the negative and extreme positioning.

Feminists believe, just as you seem to, that there are instances where biology, sex, counts. If feminists are ‘obsessed’ by biology- so are you. I don’t know if you believe in feminist principles, it comes across from your posts that you have some kind of vision of what feminists believe in your head that doesn’t quite add up in reality.

“I think being an extremist on either side fo the debate damages the cause, both TRA's and TERFs I think harm their causes enormously.”

And again, TERFS believe what you believe. What specifically do you believe is ‘extreme’ about what you have described yourself believing that warranted your comment above? Or may better yet, what beliefs are those TERFS you view as extreme discussing that you don’t hold.

As I have started to read through this thread, it really has seemed to be some sort of disconnection.

I believe that this will be attempted somewhere in the world. We already know of one male person who reportedly thought they were genuinely getting the surgery. There is a horrific sense that some vulnerable people will be experimented on because media has given them the belief that this is happening soon.

We have had posters on other threads assure us that this will be happening within a decade. And that pregnancy will occur and be carried to term not long after that. Even when we have pointed out that they have forgotten that this experiment then involves embryos and there is currently ethics around embryo experimentation up to a certain life stage.

So while I don’t believe that a male body could ever naturally build and gestate an infant. That it isn’t simply a matter of plug and play body parts. I do believe it will be attempted in time.

Putting aside the fact I have twice now acknowledged I came in to this debate a bit pithy and don’t feel I need to keep repeating this, plus the fact my personal views on the trans debate are largely irrelevant to this discussion given it’s not about the trans community or indeed me - I agree that some of my views are reflected by other gender critical feminists and some people would call me a TERF because of them. I don’t have a problem with this, I don’t personally see TERF as an insult but recognise that some people do. As I mentioned, I’ve also been called a TRA on the feminism boards because I’m happy to use any pronouns I’m asked to, I have my own pronouns in my email signature and because I have absolutely no problem with men or women dressing any way they want and referring to themselves any way they want. I have no problem being referred to as a cis woman for the purposes of describing my gender identity and I don’t see this as any threat to my identity as a woman. Equally, I have no problem with the referral to trans women as women outside of legal settings, but I strongly believe laws on spaces, healthcare, sports etc should be sex and not gender based. I don’t believe these views are mutually exclusive.

I don’t and have never said I think all gender critical feminists hate trans people, hence why I make the distinction between being anti trans and being gender critical. I also don’t think if the language around cis, woman, pronouns etc is important to you that that makes you anti trans. What makes someone anti trans rather than gender critical (and I have explained this too in a previous post) is when you take articles like this one that makes no mention of trans people, roll it up into a baton and beat the trans community round the head with it for no reason. Or when they deliberately misgender people to cause them distress or call them by their deadname for no other reason than cruelty. That’s just unnecessarily hateful - to cause someone deliberate discomfort when the alternative is so easy. Equally, I recognise every persons right to be hateful if they choose to be, I just choose to not be. Or, I believe it’s anti-trans when you weaponise the trans debate and blow the impact of trans people just existing around you completely out of proportion in order to further marginalise an already marginalised community, or to distinguish your views from those of another party for political clout. When you doggedly and repeatedly publish news stories designed to whip up mistrust and hatred towards one group of people I would call that anti-trans, in the same way I would call it anti immigration etc when it’s the turn of non white poor people to get the kicking. That doesn’t mean I don’t think there are valid questions we need to debate around trans people and the boundaries required (which I think aren’t in any sensible at the moment).

I at no point have suggested that gender critical views make you anti-trans, quite the opposite. This is now the second post where I have at some length explained the difference, although I’m still baffled why my views on this in particular are of interest given as I said at the top, this thread is neither about me or the trans community.

This is a great point I hadn’t considered - the threat of exploitation by the medical community on trans people. I actually believe puberty blockers would probably be an existing example of when ideology has been prioritised against avoiding doing medical damage to someone in the name of gender affirmation, so I don’t think it’s beyond possible that the medical community would lobby to transplant wombs into biological males and risk their lives in the name of gender affirmation.

Your second point also might be relevant as to why it could never happen - one of the core ethical restraints on research in many countries is the preclusion of testing on embryos. That said, you could argue that a womb transplant into another woman would also be considered in the same way and that’s been allowed so it’s perhaps not a barrier.

Either way, I think even if it was attempted and was somehow successful (which it couldn’t be, you can’t drag and drop organs into bodies not designed for them. Pelvic shape is one of many anatomical reasons why men can’t carry babies), the likelihood of the procedure ever becoming publicly available is I think none existent.

I’ll refer back to my cloning example as I think it chimes - the victorians successfully cloned the first cells and believed at some point, cloning would replace normal reproduction. There was moral panic about the ethics of cloning, widespread discussion that was still going on 150 years later when it became scientifically possible to clone a human being. It is one of the many, many examples of where the law and ethical boundaries has stifled an area of research for the good of humanity and a good example of ‘just because we can doesn’t mean we should’ in action. I believe transplanting wombs into men will reach the same conclusion as cloning did, although for that to be the case we need an injection of realism into our current politics because treating men in a legal sense like they can change their sex and women like they can become men will be incongruous with the ethics of this if it goes on much further.

I also wonder if whether this is where the rubber meets the road on gender affirmation too, given that it will never be possible for a male body to carry a baby, so this could serve no practical purpose.

And yet, your repetition has given even more clarity to your position.

Thank you for clarifying further.

“What makes someone anti trans rather than gender critical (and I have explained this too in a previous post) is when you take articles like this one that makes no mention of trans people, roll it up into a baton and beat the trans community round the head with it for no reason.”

It seems that you choose to disconnect this event from a wider discussion that has leveraged these surgeries being helpful to male patient ls recently. You have done this because you don’t believe it will ever happen. Fine. I don’t believe it will ever successfully culminate with a live birth of an infant from a uterus implanted into a male without a very large portion of the nutrients, hormones and compounds being delivered from external and usually artificial sources.

I don’t share your absolute confidence that these transplants won’t be happening in male people. I do believe it is worthy of discussion as one of the potential ramifications of this surgery. ‘Discussing it’ doesn’t mean the hyperbolic roll it up into a baton and beat the trans community round the head with it.

“Pelvic shape is one of many anatomical reasons why men can’t carry babies), the likelihood of the procedure ever becoming publicly available is I think none existent.”.

According to two male posters, one of which declared this was most definitely something they wanted (they did declare something about abortion but that may have been purely goading), all that is needed is a c-section.

“I don’t think it’s beyond possible that the medical community would lobby to transplant wombs into biological males and risk their lives in the name of gender affirmation.”

I, as others on this thread, believe the lobbying in this vein has already started. There are too many male people who believe this will happen. Rather than it being speculative and remaining theoretical, media and academics have made it seem to be just around the corner.

“I actually believe puberty blockers would probably be an existing example of when ideology has been prioritised against avoiding doing medical damage to someone in the name of gender affirmation,”

I agree puberty blockers are a very good example. And they are still now being described in media as ‘fully reversible’. Hence I no longer have confidence in clinicians and academics who are supposed to be leading the way for medical treatments for trans people. Media should always be treated with considerable care and fact checked. However, many people do no fact checking for many very different reasons.

Who benefits from making trans people believe that this procedure will be viable for male humans? I don’t believe ultimately it is trans people who benefit.

‘Discussing it’ doesn’t mean the hyperbolic roll it up into a baton and beat the trans community round the head with it.

@SunsetBeauregarde this is the bit you should pay attention to. Discussion of any issue affecting or potentially affecting women that may also reference trans people does not equate to beating the trans community around the head. I am not that involved with this issue but I have observed that women are often told they're harming trans people by discussing things. Just let women speak and try not to insult them when they do.

Hear Hear.

“That said, you could argue that a womb transplant into another woman would also be considered in the same way and that’s been allowed so it’s perhaps not a barrier.”

I have thought of this too. However, I suspect the difference is that there is a much greater likelihood of success due to a female body having the connectivity already in place for an embryo to develop to a full term pregnancy. Ie. The female control centre (my clumsy term) is present, it is expected that it will work.

My blunt equivalent of implanting a uterus into a male is that it is a plug in bag, and would require external supplements to develop that embryo. It would be the equivalent to growing a lamb in a bag, just with an internal blood supply. I cannot articulate it any other way.

A female to female procedure is a transplant not an implant. And while experimental, has other ethical considerations such as have adult children of this process been fully evaluated for long term health effects? Or the long term health of a living donor. Or the misuse through exploitation either of selling a woman a dream where the transplant is never going to work but a surgeon will still go ahead.

However, I suspect the transplant aspect is what allows female to female transplants to be considered ethical in respect to embryo experimentation. But that is just my view and I am very happy to have any expert correct me.

"Pelvic shape is one of many anatomical reasons why men can’t carry babies), the likelihood of the procedure ever becoming publicly available is I think none existent.”.

I keep reading this as a reason and think it's likely the list of the hurdles.
I know of a young women who was hit by train and required 12 hours of reconstructive surgery on her pelvis. She has gone on to carry several pregnancies to near term delivering via planned CS. If that is possible then I imagine it is anatomically possible to squeeze a uterus and expanding baby into a male pelvis.

The endocrinology of the pregnancy, however, is highly unlikely to happen without a biological women somewhere in the equation.

I know there are two threads from different perspectives running so I may have missed if someone has already posted this.

On this thread there has been posts about trafficking organs and posters saying it will never happen. I agreed with a poster that it wouldn’t be white western women. However I have had a thought about that.

There are also posts about transwomen/men receiving womb and being dismissed

What I haven’t seen discussed is transmen seeking hysterectomies as part of their transition - potentially they become a source of live donors? A lot are young and healthy women, so potentially good donors. Obviously they couldn’t have taken puberty blockers etc.

We could end up in a situation where a 20 year old transman wants a hysterectomy and donates her womb. It’s implanted in another woman and as per guidance removed after 5 years.

However at age 23 the donor regrets their decision and wants her womb back can it be retransplanted? Do they even qualify for a transplant as they voluntarily opted for a hysterectomy?

I know this could happen with live kidney donors etc. but in this case it could be two sisters how do you ensure no presume is placed on the transman to help their sister out?

I agree with you that discussing it does not constitute rolling U.K. U.K. and beating the trans community with it - however I do believe that articles posted here with headlines proclaiming ‘wombs could be transplanted into trans women in the future study finds’ DOES constitute this. The only purpose of taking this research and drawing thst headline from it is to stir up anti trans sentiment, when the research they quote is about women.

i do separate the trans debate from a discussion about womb transplants because I want to be able to have a discussion about advancements in women’s health without needing to consider how it applies to men. As misguided, troubling and flawed as womb transplants might be, I want the thrust of that discussion to be about women and how it applies to women, not shouted over by the abstract concept that it may, at some point in the future, apply to men too. I also don’t want a woman who could benefit from a womb transplant to be prevented from receiving one because of knee jerk, dog whistle politics grandstanding to block the treatment in the U.K. based on the trans problem. I don’t trust that our current flailing, desperate government won’t weaponise womb transplants in their determination to appear to be ‘anti woke’ whatever that means. The headlines we have seen in response to the news the transplant has been carried out in the U.K. from some media is really, really tiresome. Apparently, talking about advancements in women’s healthcare isn’t interesting unless we spin it to make people angry. I think that is abhorrent.

If the treatment is to be banned in the U.K. or not, I want the reason for that to be because we have thoroughly investigated and found that the risk to women outweighs any benefit to us. It is only by separating this conversation from the trans debate that we’ll achieve this and if we continue to bring men into any conversation about women and our health, we are lost as feminists I think.

@SunsetBeauregarde the trans debate also includes transmen i.e. biological women.

Have any of the articles discussed researching what transmen think, want etc.?

The research paper quoted earlier actually refers to trans men being a potential pool of healthy wombs for transplant into women. I’m not sure of the stats on detransitioning trans men, but I imagine the numbers are significant enough to need discussion. It’s another reason why surgical gender affirmation beyond reversible cosmetics is massively problematic.

Theres another point on that too: I’d be very interested to understand how many transwomen actually opt to take up surgery vs how many say they would like the option.

Not at all, because society for many reasons doesn’t eye trans men with the same level of suspicion and fear as trans women. It’s one of the many places where gender ideology falls down: the disparity in treatment of trans men vs trans women.

The only discussion so far about trans men is in the discussion section of the research, which refers to trans men as a pool of healthy wombs for transplant into women.

And the vast lack of research into female endocrinology during pregnancy and beyond ironically probably precludes womb transplants ever being possible for men. While we waste time and precious female health research money on swapping about wombs, we probably stifle and real possibility that the research could apply to men.

These operations are an exercise in extreme vanity. As I understand it, the transplanted womb is good for one whole pregnancy, which has to be an IVF one. Then the organ is surgical waste.

Imagine putting yourself and your family member through all that, permanently damaging (yes healthy organ removal is damaging - hell, necessary operations can be massively damaging, it's all risk vs reward) for that!

I pity the baby.

*permanently damaging the family member and the receiver, that should say.

Completely agree with this and you make a very good point about the distinction between transplantation and implantation. I think this language is vital to differentiate between 2 very different propositions.

@SunsetBeauregarde Theres another point on that too: I’d be very interested to understand how many transwomen actually opt to take up surgery vs how many say they would like the option.

Given the number of TW with paraphillia’s such as autogynaephilia, very few in % terms.

As I said on another thread the first transwoman would be shocked at the side effects of having a womb and the reality of periods and pregnancy and so would paint a very grim picture for others.

I understand. And I disagree with your insistence of excluding the discussion. I disagree that the “It is only by separating this conversation from the trans debate that we’ll achieve this.”

I fully agree the discussion on the female aspect should be had. I agree that the news reports should focus on the female aspect. However, again, the headlines for male uterus transplants are not new. They have not just sprung up with this surgery just happened. It is an ongoing discussion that you either are unaware of or wish to hive off.

How can you separate the two discussions at this point? I don’t believe it is even appropriate to do so. Narrowing the scope of discussion is where bad decisions are made.

Should the surgery be banned because potentially it could lead to male people having the surgery? No! However, discussion around how male people may end up recipients should be considered and planned for.

I don’t disagree with anything here, but I put far less stay in what a small number of men say on the internet. Saying it and even researching it does not make it possible, imminent or legal.

I agree that it is not the trans community that benefit from constantly being dragged through the media spotlight. Of course, there are some trans people who relish it but that in my experience is certainly not the majority. I (and many trans people I meet through work) believe that TRA’s are actively damaging the trans community (purposefully in some cases) by saying incendiary and outrageous things on the internet for clout and that their views don’t reflect the majority of the trans community.

Of course, client journalism such as it is in the U.K. is all too happy to amplify the trans debate because it benefits their clients enormously; in the depressing words of 30p Lee: the election strategy will be to create a culture war about trans people and immigrants.

I would so much rather we discuss research into women’s health as it applies to women.

A better question would be, how many prospective patients will be checked to ensure they fully understand ALL the negative side effects?

We already know that clinicians and surgeons have given gender affirming medical treatment without the full negative side effects being fully understood. We also know through clinician papers that patients arriving for gender dysphoria are being guided by over invested people and by lobby groups who seem to gloss over negative side effects. Plus the patient feels pressure to continue to remain included.

There are many aspects to this.

Women have specific blood vessels supplying the uterus. Men obviously don’t, so how would they establish a blood supply to a uterus being implanted into a male?

A poster up thread had a very good way to separate the debate and ensure we can talk about the 2 related problems separately which I will be using going forward, we are on the cusp of womb transplants, where a woman can receive a womb from another woman. Putting a womb in a man however would be a womb implant, not a transplant. I think this distinction is a great way to ensure any implications of giving a man a womb can be separated from transplanting a womb into a woman.