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

Someone literally posted it further up, nothing in the research suggests it will be effective or possible.

Where? They have researched it, they made a point of saying there were no reasons clinically why it would definitely not work. I haven't seen anything of the nature you describe.

Yeah, I meant that I thought there should have been a very well publicised campaign from the gov/NHS to survey people's feelings.

Oh I see what you mean - I certainly don't remember that around the time.

I think a lot goes under the radar of even the biggest news outlets, and I don't follow them particularly.

Without Mumsnet I wouldn't have had prior warning.

Oh, look what PinkNews are saying:

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/08/23/trans-womb-transplants-years-away/

Your heart could go to someone who has committed murder, your lungs could go to a rapist. If you gift organs, you gift them. If you don’t want to give them, then fine but you cannot assign morality to it. Either do or don’t.

Your heart could go to someone who has committed murder, your lungs could go to a rapist. If you gift organs, you gift them. If you don’t want to give them, then fine but you cannot assign morality to it. Either do or don’t.

Womb transplants that may happen to indulge male fetishes are Frankenstein surgery so yes, I will assign morality to it. I will gift heart, lungs etc. and I hope they don't go to someone undeserving but I will never agree to my reproductive organs being donated (along with skin, tissue etc.)

Just seen the GMB piece with one female presenter and an otherwise all male comment.

I wonder, after Dr Amir Khan told viewers that donated wombs can be harvested from dead and brain dead women, how many women actively opted out of organ donation.

I would genuinely like to see the numbers from today.

One could probably FOI that?

One of those noisy extremists discussed upthread in a revealing video shown in a recent interview with author of bestselling book Trans, Helen Joyce. Listen to the descriptions of a womb implant this person uses and have a think about what motivates them. She says what she feels in no uncertain terms.

x.com/bettscaro/status/1694784349659414908?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

Yes I would think so, once the data has come through.

It would be interesting to see how much this story affects overall numbers.

This one from 2021, a year after the change to auto opt in, was refused on cost grounds.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/nooffswitchersfrommoptinntoo#incoming-1741680

You'd think they'd have figures already, really, it's not a complicated request!

has this been posted?

https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/read/ethics-science-and-history-of-uterine-transplants-in-males

Apologies if so.

I’m on the organ donor register for taking anything at all. I’m happy with that.

They aren’t allowed to take my reproductive organs without consent plus my peri menopausal uterus full of fibroids is no good to anyone. This is because I believe you only get one life on earth and I want to benefit those I leave behind. I want to be able to accept a donor organ without qualm for me or anyone I love if needed. That’s just how I feel, but anyone else is completely free to feel how they feel.

I absolutely agree with all of the posters who think organ donation must be based on rock solid consent and that presumed consent with an opt out is in that light a worse arrangement than an active consent with a funded perpetual publicity campaign to recruit donors. However that consideration is Inope mitigated to an extent by lives saved. By this time culturally this presumption should be bedding in so people who want to opt out should be doing it.

However we all know that in practice there isn’t much information around this that you can’t miss seeing, which is a poor consent arrangement because most people have busy lives and lots of more urgent things to think about and they will easily not have ever thought about this.

However my understanding is that presumed consent means that any hint of disagreement from the bereaved family is respected so that’s another thing to think about and talk about( if you have a family) while you’re still fit and well and before you opt out, if that will be your decisIon.

Well, we could do with a lot more information and awareness about how to prepare for death in general, tbh.

Perhaps a gov.uk website would help; this kind of thing could be signposted and explained and linked to.

Fascinating link, lots more detail than found on the bbc website. The fact that this woman had her first period with the transplant is interesting because...

"The surgery went well, but after the 26 year old woman's second menstrual cycle, the blood supply to the new uterus failed and the uterus began to die, requiring surgeons to remove the organ just three months after the transplant."

Also I didn't know that the live birth in Sweden was from the uterus of a 61 year old woman!

A good find @Helleofabore

I didn't know that the live birth in Sweden was from the uterus of a 61 year old woman!

Case study was published if you'd like to see a little more.

The uterus was donated from a living, 61-year-old, two-parous woman. In-vitro fertilisation treatment of the recipient and her partner had been done before transplantation, from which 11 embryos were cryopreserved.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25301505/

Perhaps I was not clear.

I did say you’re within your rights to choose not
to donate any organ for any reason. Some people choose not to donate at all for moral reasons. I’m saying if you donate organs (wombs aside) then you have no say on the type of human who receives them. So, if you do want a say, just don’t donate.

Here is another reminder of how it is not hard to find male people with trans identities discussing their abortion fetishes:

@graceelavery
Just realized: someone alive today will
become the first trans woman to get an
abortion. <3
7:15 pm • 05/04/2021

Lavery is a very prominent trans academic who is British but lives and works in USA. And somewhat an author who dedicates books to Lavery's penis. It is really not hard to find comments like this when you start to notice them.

@Helleofabore see the linked video I posted of Helen Joyce interview with Megyn Kelly. Everyone should watch that.

x.com/j4ppleby/status/1694756969054167215?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

I fully agree Eresh!!

That video link should be posted on every single page. That person is certainly not the only one to have felt the heady freedom of laying the fetish out there.

Fucking hell. That man is sick.

Wow am genuinely shocked by this. I honestly thought that trans advocates would celebrate transwomen could potentially give birth. Apparently not.

Fetishising abortion is so absolutely disgusting and demeaning to women. I’m a bit lost for words on that one.

There is another one (K. Montgomerie) who keeps posting that terminations are just like having a tooth out. Apparently this is supposed to be supportive of women. Imagine making such an insensitive, clueless comment to a woman having a medically necessary termination of a very much wanted pregnancy?

Or to a woman who would like to continue the pregnancy, but whose current circumstances make it impossible for her to do so? For some women, termination is a decision they are totally sure about, but for so many women, it's an emotionally complex decision they make with their heads, but not their hearts. Where is the compassion for those women, who grieve the pregnancies they felt forced to terminate?

People like Montgomerie love trolling women. It's a power trip. The more outrageous, the bigger the thrill it gives them.