It's a paper written by a Philosophy academic about ethics. It's not a medical suggestion.

It would be ethically unsound for any woman to be used as an incubator and very risky for the baby. If the woman's brain is compromised there's no guarantee that the correct hormones would be produced at the right times and quantities. People in a vegetative state are also very susceptible to organ failure and require medications to maintain their bodies that may be dangerous to a Ferguson.

I get no sense from this article that this is anything more than a thought experiment.

Pretty grim thought experiment...

"Any women wanting to avoid the 'risks and burdens' of being pregnant themselves should have access to this form of surrogacy, she said.

But we can transfer the risks of gestation to those who are no longer able to be harmed by them.'
Couples opting to use a braindead surrogate would avoid direct 'emotional and physical' trauma themselves if there were complications with the birth, Dr Smajdor argued.
I mean, she calls it 'whole body gestational donation' and says she has ideas for the men too so to calm down the feminists.

Thought experiment it may be but not only do I not want to be anywhere near someone who thinks this way, I also don't want them influencing policy on bio ethics or philosophy students either, but as a Dr of Philosophy that's her job. I'm sure they can make up their own minds and see how gross an idea this is.

@unclebuck this is what the whole push of ‘uterus haver’ ‘chest feeder’. ‘Cervix haver’ is. An ad on mumsnet referred to women as ‘vulva havers’. Surrogate mothers are not referred to as such any more but as ‘carriers’. The goal is to dehumanise women. Men do not get this treatment. It’s supposed to be ‘inclusive’ 🙄🙄🙄🙄.

Where to start? But bottom line is: who ... WHO would want their baby to have gestated in a dead woman?????

This is stuff out of recent Handmaids Tale episodes…… unthinkable

there was a horrific case last year of a brain dead pregnant woman being kept oxygenated on a ventilator while a court order was sought to allow the ventilator to be turned off, as that was going to kill the baby too, obviously .

The woman's body was rotting in her bed, horrendous for the family

It was proved beyond all doubt that there was zero chance of the baby surviving, and the court gave permission for the life support to be turned off.

not an original or well thought through "thought experiment" - just a rehash of a terrible distressing case that has already been explored legally and medically at length

The world is getting weirder by the minute, yes I agree with pp, it’s dehumanising women. How would you explain to the child?

Surrogate born children will have to hear about their parents leaving their mothers behind in wars (Ukraine) and natural disasters (Nepal).

The woman's body was rotting in her bed, horrendous for the family

I remember this, the grief and torment for the family must have been off the scale. I'm not sure who the Drs has centred in their best interests.

Much of the paper by Dr Smajdor appears to me to be about pushing the boundaries of science and bioethics and she prioritised those who want a baby. The woman, her consent, the family and the wider public have not been considered at all as far as I can tell.

I think most people would be shocked at this proposal and experts would reject it but then

"Experts say womb transplants for transwomen are needed to end discrimination"

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11692871/How-womb-transplant-work-trans-women-born-men.html

Dead women and men having babies it is then?

It’s horrific but better to use dead women than live ones.
Should be banned completely but as that’s unlikely I suppose at least this way there is no physical or emotional risk to the woman herself

Apparently Dr Smajdor has apologised but I haven't got a subscription to read it in full.

www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/03/medics-apologise-suggesting-brain-dead-women-could-used-surrogate/

Archived version web.archive.org/web/20230203183358/www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/03/medics-apologise-suggesting-brain-dead-women-could-used-surrogate/

Exactly so much of what is apparently ‘accepted’ in the trans ‘debate’ and erosion of women's rights would have been seen as shocking in the past. Repeated floating of the idea gradually makes it seem more acceptable.

Thank you @FatAgainItsLettuceTime

After initially defending the article as not representative of the association’s own views, on Wednesday the medical college issued an apology and claimed that its only interest was “medical progress at the service of humanity with the highest bioethical standards”.

Highest bioethical standards? Is that what we are calling this now? But at first the college defended the article so they only changed their position after the backlash, or perhaps they didn't read it before defending it.

It's pretty embarrassing, they will forever be associated with this sadly as they employ the woman who wrote it.

This is one reason I'm not on the donor list

Those of us who mentioned it as a reason were told we were crazy.

Doesn’t work. They tried it in Ireland to sustain a pregnant woman who was pregnant due to the 8th amendment. One of the lowest points in my countries history.

Here is an article about it.

What a hideous and morally corrupt idea.

But it’s a short step from finding a woman who is unfortunate enough to be ‘brain dead ‘ but otherwise healthy enough to carry a baby to full term (fairly rare, I would think) and going out and ‘commissioning’ one.

It is already happening with organ transplants, people selling kidneys (maybe okay with the ‘donor’ or in this case , vendor, getting by with one) and then being abducted and/ or imported to have an single organ ‘harvested ‘ as in the recent case. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already happening with single irreplaceable organs in some countries.

But what an advantage for the purchasers! No problems with birth mothers turning up, or not wanting to give up the baby, or being traced by desperate adult children. No need even for a relationship with a living women for those who really, really don’t like the whole icky female bit.

It was a paper by a philosopher that was then published in the journal of the Colombian medical association, as I understand it. Is there any clue as to what the Colombian medics actually think of it - do/did they endorse it?

Yes, it's a thought experiment but we're seeing now, with queer theory & trans issues, what happens when thought experiments are allowed to escape from academia into the real world.

I have no idea why this professor thinks that implanting uterii into vegetive men would make it any more acceptable to feminists.

The whole thing is revolting and morally bankrupt.

This is exactly why I opted out of organ donation. Unfortunately you can’t just opt out your womb, you have to opt out all of you.

Same for me @Blagdoon - I've left strict instructions for my next of kin, but left the donor registry after reading the proposals about novel organ harvesting for transplants in the U.K on MN some years ago.

@Rightsraptor the paper was also published in Springer last year. I don't know why is coming to the fore only now.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11017-022-09599-8

I remember this case.

At the outset, I thought it was reasonable. Because I was thinking in terms of it being like the few days/couple of weeks tops to let the baby reach better viability and receive steroids to boost lung function etc. Because the urge to have your child live is very strong.

But of course I didn't really appreciate how vast the gulf is between a few days longer and something that would need to stretch into several weeks. And how the body deteriorates, even on life support. And unless it is a baby that is definitely salvageable (for want of a better term) which needs only a few days to dramatically improve odds of survival, then I really don't think this should be happening

Blog post on this...

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/02/who-owns-the-human-body