Jessica Alves talks about a womb transplant.......

[RVN123]

You probably know of this trans person, has been in the media a LOT due to plastic surgery etc.
Has recently transitioned. Was in the press a few days ago saying they could not wait to lose their 'virginity' with a man, and now is hoping for a 'womb transplant'.
Do you think this will ever be possible? My thinking is (hopefully) not. Too many hurdles to overcome (synthetic hormones, anti rejection drugs, pelvis wrong shape, no way to give birth naturally, how to replicate changing hormones during a pregnancy etc ).
Is that all it takes now to be a woman? A plastic surgeon and shoving in a donated uterus? Makes me feel deeply uneasy, I pray no ethics committee will ever allow this to happen.
Its all a bit Frankensteinian.
Thoughts?

^^‘Pregnancy isn't fully understood, it's so complex. How are they going to replicate it in a male when they don't fully understand natural pregnancy in women?’

I bet they’d soon learn about women’s reproductive systems, quicker than you could imagine if this was their end goal. I bet we’d suddenly have so much more information about our bodies: endo; pregnancy; miscarriage; still births; menopause; peri…the research would be done (and in double quick time), because men would benefit (and they’d be money to be made).

I noticed some of the comments on the article referenced adoption, and asked why they didn’t adopt instead. We know why, but I’d also like to point out that many adoptive children have experienced so much trauma in their little lives…they should be absolutely no where near a situation where an individual requires constant attention, validation and procedures. I’m convinced this kind of individual would not pass the rigorous screening (not in this country anyway).

It might be possible to implant a uterus into the abdominal cavity of a male person and persuade the body to establish an adequate blood flow to the organ and the immune system not to reject it. Conceiving "naturally" isn't going to happen. That's a highly complex biological process and Ms Alves not producing eggs is a fundamental stumbling block. Growing a healthy baby to term in a donated womb in a male body also appears vanishingly unlikely.

What's the betting that Ms Alves feigns a pregnancy and claims to have given birth?

@Oblomov21

Frightening.

Has JA ever said why they want to be a woman? What does being a woman mean?

I'm firmly of the belief for a lot of transgender people being trans is not so much about 'being a woman' or 'being a man', far more about 'not being a man' or 'not being a woman'.

As for this, if any ethics committee anywhere in the world approves a proposal to implant a womb from a female donor, or grown in a lab, into a male body, with a view to seeing if that male can gestate a baby, that's the day I give up hope for the human race.

If someone who wants children cannot conceive by conventional means, there are children out there who need parents. But perhaps parenthood with all its self-sacrifice and unconditional love is not the ultimate goal here; pregnancy is!

In the UK, children are the main focus of adoption, not parents, and I feel this is as it should be. The extensive checks you have to go through to be approved to adopt would surely - surely - rule out somebody with serious mental health challenges around accepting their body as it is. It can't be healthy for a child to grow up in a household where the adoptive parent is constantly planning their next cosmetic surgery.

I'm firmly of the belief for a lot of transgender people being trans is not so much about 'being a woman' or 'being a man', far more about 'not being a man' or 'not being a woman'.

I think in JAs case “being a woman” is a way to open up a whole new avenue of plastic surgery opportunities.

I worry for people like this, surely there is only so many operations a body can comfortably tolerate, the surgeons really ought to be prosecuted.

It’s concerning that surgeons are quite happy for people to be their experiments who obviously have issues

Soon Jessica will want to be someone else. Rodrigo wanted to look like a Ken

Jessica is completely deluded

As a type 1 diabetic from aged 1, at about 40 years old, my consultant mentioned a pancreas transplant.

But I'd have to have 6 to 9 months of steroids, immunosuppressants and allsorts of other tablets in preparation for surgery.

then a pancreas time would have to be found. then I would be on drugs and steroids and pills post surgery, for the rest of my life.

plus she said at that time the average expectancy of the pancreas transplant was 10 years. that would've only taken me to 50. so not have to have another one, would I be offered one on the nhs?

and then another one at 60? and another one at 70 another at 80?

so they're suggesting I have four or five pancreas transplants in my lifetime?

what a load of rot!!

Jessica was a very ordinary sort of man

Now she’s quite an extraordinary… person.

Thereby creating an income and feeding an unhealthy addiction (to extremes).

Goodness, people like JA who think they can simply buy a womb and birth a baby really do see us as just incubation vessels and have no idea of what pregnancy and childbirth is remotely about and how complex it is.

I think ethics will not prevent attempts to transfer a uterus from a female person into a male person. There are plenty of unethical doctors.

My prediction is that attempts will eventually stop because every attempt will fail (at least for the next 200 years).

Transplantation of organs from donors of one sex to recipients of the other sex, is only successful for organs, for example heart, lungs, kidney, which can function in a body of either sex. There have been difficulties with adverse immune responses in individual patients but in those cases the male recipient's body rejects an organ from a female donor because it is not the donor's "self" not because the organ is from a female donor. Fix the immune response of the patient and the new heart will be a direct replacement for the old heart. The heart from a female person does not need a female body. A female heart in a male body will still function (although doctors have learned that outcomes are more successful if a female donor and male recipient have similar body size because the stresses on the heart's function depend largely on body size).

Inserting a female person's uterus into a male person will fail because a uterus needs a female body.

oops. I should have written:

There have been difficulties with adverse immune responses in individual patients but in those cases the male recipient's body rejects an organ from a female donor because it is not the recipient's "self" not because the organ is from a female donor.

The ethics of the surgeons repeatedly altering them must be questionable

This.

@nauticant

It is about trying to change how people think by assuming a medical horror is a run-of-the-mill thing just round the corner. It's Overton Window stuff, not science.

Am working hard on trying to keep this bloody window firmly shut.

Today's report about the appalling safeguarding fails in Lambeth should remind people how easy it is for determined adults to harm children with the ignorant collusion of politically captured adults.

'Conceive naturally'. This person is clearly ill and this hope, if genuinely held, is a delusion. To provide medical affirmation of a fantasy in this way has to be incredibly damaging to that individual.

I find it hard to see that any ethics committee could possibly give its stamp of approval to such a procedure. For a child to be born in these circumstances would obviously be impossible, so that is a question they can clearly discount. But enabling such a procedure in affirmation of a patient's delusion - and it is a delusion - has ethical implications of its own and raises serious questions about that person's mental wellbeing.

What Jessica is saying to the papers is likely a far cry from what's said by medical professionals and ethics committees, because Jessica's grasp on material facts is severely limited. Jessica is physically incapable - ever - of bearing a baby, is in flagrant denial of biological reality, and apparently has no understanding of what a woman actually is. This is the ultimate manifestation of 'TWAW'; a stance unlikely to lead anywhere good for individuals like Jessica who I've no doubt are leading their lives in a very tortured, unhappy state.

Despite everything, I have enormous sympathy for Jessica. It's a truly sad, pitiful story.

It would mean implanting not just a uterus, but the attached vagina, fallopian tubes and ovaries, too, if a 'natural' conception and birth is to be even a remote possibility. Presumable these organs would have to be harvested from a young, healthy donor who has died by trauma that has not impacted her abdominal organs. 😥

My guess is that there will be pressure on young transmen to ‘be kind’ and hand over their reproductive systems.

This actually makes me feel ill. Surely no sane medical professional anywhere would actually think this is ethical to do?

FFS we live in a world where women can't even easily choose to have a c-section if that's what they want. Yet apparently some think it's progressive for men to implant our wombs in their bodies.

Wtaf. Is all I have left really.

I'm ashamed to say I didn't really know about the Overton Window before, so thanks for enlightening me about that.

A quick glance at the comments on some of the articles about this shows that the window is rapidly opening! eg "OMG I didn't know this was possible!" and "does she know she'll get periods and PMS every month" and "good luck to her" etc.
So some people just don't question what they are told, they have already accepted that it's a done deal and that men can become women any old time they want.
It's all about eroding the sex differences, blurring the lines, so that we accept men can become women even biologically.

Sickening fantasy stuff.

@JackGrealishsShorts

This actually makes me feel ill. Surely no sane medical professional anywhere would actually think this is ethical to do?

FFS we live in a world where women can't even easily choose to have a c-section if that's what they want. Yet apparently some think it's progressive for men to implant our wombs in their bodies.

Wtaf. Is all I have left really.

Call me naive, but I really, seriously don't think they would.

All I can say is that if I'm wrong and I've underestimated the influence and reach of this movement - insidious, ubiquitous and the most dangerous assault on women's rights I've seen in my lifetime - then women are seriously fucked.

I suspect the likeliest outcome of any such attempt is necrosis and am accompanying threat to the life of the implant recipient. I hope, without much confidence, that potential donors and recipients will not find surgeons willing to get involved.

But when I consider the evident glee with which what is effectively a celebrity surgeon publicises his growing tally of sliced-off young women's healthy breasts, I despair of the profession and its gatekeepers.

What if it was a bio woman by birth (sorry for not sure on terminology) who had say a hysterectomy at a young age due to cancer.

I know that organ donation exists, This is the first I have ever heard the concept womb transplant. Is it even medically possible?

@GothamGirl1970

What if it was a bio woman by birth (sorry for not sure on terminology) who had say a hysterectomy at a young age due to cancer.

I know that organ donation exists, This is the first I have ever heard the concept womb transplant. Is it even medically possible?

It has apparently been done about 50 times since 2014 in biological women. Success rate about 30% carrying a baby to term. Organ is removed after the birth to stop the body rejecting the transplant and to avoid having to take anti rejection drugs for the rest of the patients life.

Never been done in a biological male successfully but I do think it has been attempted. Wasn't the premise of the film 'The Danish Girl' about the painter who transitioned and eventually died from this surgery? I know the film isn't explicit about the actual surgery but a little research told me that they had a womb transplant and then died from complications a few months later (probably sepsis or rejection).

@GothamGirl1970

What if it was a bio woman by birth (sorry for not sure on terminology) who had say a hysterectomy at a young age due to cancer.

I know that organ donation exists, This is the first I have ever heard the concept womb transplant. Is it even medically possible?

Previous relevant thread about transplants and in whom they've been done to date: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4187757-Womb-Transplants

tl;dr version: so far, these have been done in women with DSD or whose uterus has been affected for various reasons.

Research may well expand to incorporate women who have had a hysterectomy for reasons that you outline.

Today, there are some countries and healthcare systems looking to do more advanced research in various groups as part of their commitment to 'reproductive justice'.

@RVN123 @EmbarrassingAdmissions

I was asking for myself. I’m too old now but just wondered if there was hope for women like me who never got to be mums because of cancer at age 30.

I have been approved to adopt here after an arduous process and at the match meeting was matched with 2 children over 10 who were so damaged from years of care and abuse that even with the resources I have for specialist therapies etc., there was just too much damage. The one child had pulled knives on 3 previous foster mothers.

It’s a heartbreaker still for me, but the care system and adoption system in the U.K. needs a complete overhaul in my opinion.

re. Lili Elbe (The Danish Girl)
Have to add though that this was in the 1930s and I'm not sure what the ethical process was in those days or even if there was one! Does anyone know?
There was also speculation, though not confirmed, that this person had a DSD and may have either been a male with Klinefelter syndrome or had internal ovarian tissue.

I was asking for myself. I’m too old now but just wondered if there was hope for women like me who never got to be mums because of cancer at age 30.

I think the motivation for research in circumstances like yours is strong and it will be included in the research looking at doing this. The drive to research this differs in some countries because of different rules around surrogate pregnancies. Eg, if a healthcare system permits altruistic surrogacy involving a family member, then there might not be the same driver for that country to be at the forefront of research in womb transplants.

If a healthcare system doesn't allow that sort of surrogacy arrangement, then they might see value in investing in womb transplants for some groups and then expand beyond that.

It’s a heartbreaker still for me, but the care system and adoption system in the U.K. needs a complete overhaul in my opinion.

I couldn't agree more. Some of the experiences of the much-loved and much-missed foster carer Earth Mother I'm Not are still available on MN and are an eye-opener.