Baby born after womb transplant

[Wildflowers99]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/34329085/womb-transplant-baby-hope/

I’m not really sure how I feel about this.

On one hand it all seems consensual and fine, and nice that they’re all happy.

On the other it seems yet more expansion of surrogacy-type science, making pregnancy/babies a sort of human right that we should go to any lengths to make possible for people. And all the ethical/moral issues around that.

What do you think?

But other live donations are quite risky; lung, liver, and kidney donations all carry significant risks to the donor.

Yes but people die from lung, liver and kidney disease
Nobody ever died from NOT giving birth.

Do you even know if everyone who has a womb transplant achieved a pregnancy in the first place? They will have to have gone through IVF which has a lower rate of implantation.

Because there is a difference between a baby and a fetus. People who are against abortion are against a fetus not surviving (because of anything other than something 100% natural causing it). That's why I asked.

This was funded by a charity specifically set up for this. It wasnt NHS.

Kidney donations are one of the safest forms of donation for the donor. The risks are usually the same as those for most other surgeries (including hysterectomy) - infection, clotting etc. Lung and liver are more risky and I would absolutely try to dissuade a healthy relative from being a live donor of either of these.

I think a still born baby is a baby. I think a premature baby who had died is a baby. I am pro-choice but I also believe that at some point in a pregnancy it's not just a bundle of cells.

Yes of course those two examples are babies. But they are not being experimented on. It's a womb transplant.

If people want to get it done then they can pay for it. It's not something that should be available on the NHS

You can't have IVF without a womb.

The charity pays the NHS. Unless I am mistaken, the NHS is stretched to almost breaking point.

Private money is being used to divert NHS resources.

And it's only purpose is to allow a woman to host said foetus/baby. The woman and the foetus/baby are being experimented on. All of these procedures are being carried out as research projects. That is the definition of experimentation.

Yes you can, as long as you have ovaries you can do IVF and make embryos. Then the embryo transfer / implantation happens once the womb transplant has taken place.

Well all the people involved including the surgeons, nurses etc obviously think it is worth the time

It's not a research project. Its surgery. The research stage has long passed.

No it hasn't. Stop commenting before you Google.

https://wombtransplantuk.org/research/current-research-programme

This is the same charity who organised the case we are currently discussing. It's very much an active research programme.

“WTUK aims to lower the operation’s price so it becomes NHS-provided.” Janice Turner in The Times this week.

WTUK = womb transplant UK, the charity set up for these transplant operations.

With many types of surgery or illnesses there are ongoing research groups. It's not the same as saying its research/experimenting with babies being experimented on. Any surgery that is common place in the year 2025 had to start at some point and would have been in its infancy at some point. That's not a reason to not carry out an operation. I'm very glad I'm not living in days gone by where an amputation was a clamp and a lot of whiskey.

This is a woman who didn't have a functioning womb and as with any other type of transplant or artificial limb etc the surgeons gave her what she was missing from her body. Whether it's a womb or leg or eye. I think its amazing the knowledge and skills of these men and women performing any type of surgery in order to help another human being.

It's an active research project. They have it in black and white on their website. It is still in its infancy as a procedure and they ARE still experimenting. Stop making claims then changing your mind about what claims you are making when you've been proven wrong. You may really, really believe in this work and that's ok . There's a donation page on their website to fund their research.

You also still don't seem to see beyond the very simplistic - one person's happiness is all that matters despite the wider social implications.

Ok so say you needed a kidney transplant. And I stopped you at the hospital door and said you cant have a kidney transplant because someone, somewhere might be the victim of black market kidney harvesting. Would you say that would be fair?

I think I'd have been stopped a bit sooner than at the door but yes that would be ok with me. If there was a chance that my kidney came from a trafficked woman then I wouldn't want it. Because I don't believe that my right to health and happiness is more important than someone else's. Also as I keep saying....kidney donation is safer all round than womb donation. But you keep sticking your fingers in your ears.

Fostering and adoption are not to enhance an infertile woman's life; they are to enhance a child's life. Nowadays, most children in the UK who need to be fostered or adopted come from very damaging backgrounds and are likely to have severe problems: they need parents who are particularly able to deal with these problems, and particularly committed to doing so.. To treat adoption and fostering as a quick fix for infertility risks being much more selfish than the procedure that you condemn,

And yes like I said earlier in the thread, I do think we have to talk about the ethical considerations of ALL live organ donation. Particularly because of the statistics that suggest women are much more likely to donate but less likely to receive donated organs.