Indian surgeon plans to transplant a womb into a transwomen

[kieronsmum]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10796849/Indian-surgeon-plans-transplant-womb-TRANS-woman-pregnant-world-op.html

lost for words

Sorry, to be clear.

Are we are to understand that the feelings and issues experienced by this group of people, the children of these procedures, are to be ignored because the needs of adults to have ability to produce children in this way should be considered a higher priority ethically?

And that ethically, society will continue to ignore this group and just press on regardless?

Or even if this group of people did not exist, that ethically society will be very happy for an animal to carry a human foetus? Or be happy that many human foetuses will be experimented on when they are not now?

What do you think will lower people's ethical boundaries between now and the 'long way off' future?

@Helleofabore

Its just changing ethics, I have no horse in the race on the ethics of it, it is what it is and is beyond our imagination to accurately think what people far in the future will think about this.
Think about it, look at all the things people would have been mortally offended by in the past that happen today - heck even the idea of this feminism board and “womens rights” would blow peoples minds in 18oo and probably enrage them and be against there ethics. Ethics change - what seems incredibly wrong to people today can change in ways we can’t possibly imagine. Imagine what people a a hundred years ago thought of racial equality? Imagine what people 2000 years ago thought about the morality and inevitability of slavery? Minds change beyond present imagination.

Ethics change - what seems incredibly wrong to people today can change in ways we can’t possibly imagine.

They change through greater understanding and exposure.

And on the current trajectory, that 'greater understanding and exposure' is showing there is a major ethical consideration needing to be made around the children who are the product of these procedures.

Not quite sure what you are suggesting, other than that group will be ignored as being less important or they will find some way to 'reframe' these people's trauma. They are being born in an era where there is no social stigma attached to how they were conceived in many instances (there are children of IVF in that group or other assisted conceptions). And yet, they are still grappling with being produced on demand in a lab in this way.

I disagree with you that it is inevitable.

@Helleofabore

Im not arguing on the right and wrong of it - I’m saying I don’t think ethics just progress to be better and better because of more understanding. I’m saying different times have different ideas of right and wrong and that this doesn’t run in a linear line of getting better and better. There were ideas that slavery for instance was wrong in the Middle Ages - and then America went ahead and made it a national institution. Things don’t just get more and more moral - not is it possible to assume morality over what people in the future might do.

Perhaps those groups will push back and make it harder for things like this to be researched as you say. But even then eventually that will go the other way and it will happen.

@tamzo85 I disagree with you. The science of pregnancy is very complicated and there is a lot we still don’t understand. A man is physically and chemically unable to sustain a pregnancy. It just wouldn’t happen. It’s a bit like shitting gold. Won’t happen.

If you insist that transwomen have cervixes, then you can insist they have a uterus too, and then there is no need for transplants.

Or have I not understood some fundamental biological facts?

Certainly ethics change. At one point slavery and selling children away from parents and using women as brood mares and beating people to death was seen as perfectly acceptable.

I'm not sure that I want to be part of any future that sees children as a commodity, places an adult's lovely experience of owning a baby and acting out parenthood above the needs and future of the human they are making use of, and minimalises children's emotional and developmental wellbeing for adult selfish solipsism and thinks this is 'progressive'. Because it isn't, it's an appalling regression and failure of humanity and I will fight it every inch of the way.

About the same way I will fight seeing females as depersoned walking Mr Potato Head body parts to avoid male feelings being ruffled, and their bodily consent, autonomy and freedom of association being subordinated to the freedoms of males to make use of them for their own better choosy choices and self centred agenda. Male supremacism and quite exceptional selfishness is no kind of progress to be celebrating. In fact here on MN we need to be querying how the actual fuck we have managed to raise people who seem incapable of empathy or care for others or ability to think critically and about anything but themselves, their wants, their entitlements, and how to manipulate and compel others to do what they say. We're doing something very, very wrong.

I'm not sure that I want to be part of any future that sees children as a commodity, places an adult's lovely experience of owning a baby and acting out parenthood above the needs and future of the human they are making use of, and minimalises children's emotional and developmental wellbeing for adult selfish solipsism and thinks this is 'progressive'. Because it isn't, it's an appalling regression and failure of humanity and I will fight it every inch of the way.

Yes. Rather!

A group or entity that cares more about profit and fame than about children, and have for a long time.

I think the medical establishment have seen children, and all people, this way for a while.

I think you assumed otherwise but were wrong.

After a bit of poking around online, there are at least some convicing sources about womb transplants for women. They have been done, and babies have been born. This is from the Lancet in 2018, and there have been more.

So (I think) we do need to be careful about what arguments we use. Are the women who accept womb transplants also being selfish, not caring about the needs of the babies they produce, or treating children (and wombs) as commodities?

There's a massive difference between women being the recipients of a uterus transplant and "experimental" surgery to implant a uterus into a man. They are not equivalent. Because women without a uterus, due to a developmental issue or losing their own through cancer or similar, are women. With a female body that has all the resources and ability to maintain a pregnancy, apart from a uterus.

Well, no. But sometimes horse breeders want to implant fetuses from pedigree horses into unregistered (therefore less valuable) mares. And the results are very interesting and should really be brought into the surrogacy discussion.

Because if you implant a fetus from a pony into a thoroughbred or vice versa, both the final height and growth patterns of the foal change in line with the characteristics of the recipient mare, not just its genetic parents.

There's also some research into behavioural differences in the foals resulting from such a transfer. There's not much of that research to date, but what we have suggests that the recipient mare does not passively grow the implanted embryo like a mechanical incubator. Her body changes the fetus' body and mind and the resulting foal will be unequivocally changed from what it would have become had it grown inside the mare who donated the egg.

There's no reason to think this would not be true for humans.

That is really interesting Charley. I think I might go and see if I can find some more about it.

There's a massive difference between women being the recipients of a uterus transplant and "experimental" surgery to implant a uterus into a man.

True, though all surgery is experimental til it's done enough times.

Because women without a uterus, due to a developmental issue or losing their own through cancer or similar, are women. With a female body that has all the resources and ability to maintain a pregnancy, apart from a uterus.

Indeed, I can't see transplanting into a man succeeding anytime soon, and I can't see it ever being straightforward or reliable.

Blimey CharlieParley, I had no idea about horse surrogacy and its effects. Every day's a schoolday on MunsNet! Though that's foetuses not wombs.

Blimey CharlieParley, I had no idea about horse surrogacy and its effects

Likewise, I've indulged my curiosity by reading up about it. Thank you Wayback for a couple of items.

I'd have thought the money would be better spent trying to stop so many women and babies dying or having life changing injuries through pregnancy and birthing before trying to work out how men can do it.

And I've just donated again to a charity that helps women who have no access to healthcare get surgery to repair childbirth induced fistulas. It's sickening that women are left to suffer from this and other horrific ob/gyn problems (and really suffer) while there is contemplation of using precious surgical resources to enable rich males to have babies.

Somewhat pertinent to this thread:

Switzerland has just voted in a national referendum to make organ donation "opt out" (i.e. "you're a donor by default unless otherwise declared).

From what I can tell (might help if my French and/or German were better) this didn't come up as an argument at all during the campaign.

Broadly speaking, it's actually something I could get behind. I'm not all that invested in "corpse rights" when the living are at stake.

It does raise the question about whether or not experimental transplants would enjoy the same level of popular support as what people seem to have voted for. I suspect perhaps less so.

My emerging thoughts on this FWIW. This is Dr Frankenstein stuff right?

Let's say a young woman has had to have a hysterectomy, a womb implant would be a good thing because it solves the loss, like a heart transplant etc. Her body is given a chance to perform as it's meant to.

On a man however, this is the ultimate tinkering around with nature which also has an impact on another life, the hypothetical baby, can you justify for them to be part of such an experiment?

The man has a healthy body in theory, there is no physical need for this so how can you justify this procedure on males over females?

Anyway this is an ethical issue, thoughts in progress.

Dear, god - the dear doctor seems to be trying to find the solution to Stan/Loretta's problem from The Life of Brian:

Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?

But of course, the Pythons were right all along:

Reg: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?
Francis: (thinks) It is symbolic of our struggle against repression!
Reg: (quietly) Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp9MPLEAqA

vaishnavisundar.com/man-womb-and-the-indian-frankenstein/

What do we know about the plastic surgeon who wants to transplant a uterus into a male body?