Should Uterus Transplantation for Transwomen and Transmen Be Subsidized?

[PorcelinaV]

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/should-uterus-transplantation-transwomen-and-transmen-be-subsidized/2023-06

As far as I know this hasn't been mentioned yet on the forum?

Anyway quoting from the source:

Transwomen who want to gestate children. Even though there has been no uterus transplant to date in transwomen that we know of, some clinicians have maintained that there are no absolute barriers in anatomy, hormones, and obstetric considerations that would rule out the possibility of successful UTx in transwomen.11 Transwomen wanting to gestate children can plausibly justify subsidy of UTx on a number of grounds, as mentioned above. Transwomen lack a trait (the ability to bear children) that may cause them to experience psychological dissonance in a way that undermines their health and well-being. The lack of a uterus also closes off the prospect of gestating a child in a way that is available to women as a class. It follows that lack of a uterus is an obstacle to full participation in the social goods attached to women’s identity.

The whole thing is ridiculous.
On that same basis I could argue that I want to be any number of things that I am not/cannot be, but demand that I should have access to. I can't play the piano and it causes me great sadness, I demand free piano lessons. I'm only 5 ft 4, I want to be 6ft, this causes me great sadness so I must have my legs broken and lengthened.
I mean, where does it stop?
People have to accept that their physical reality (i.e sex) prevents them from doing some things. Transwomen cannot bear children because they are men, and men cannot bear children. In the old logical world this was never questioned. They do not "lack a trait" - they do not have the trait because they are male. What should be being treated is the psychological issue that is causing a man to feel upset at not being able to bear children - not working out how to implant female organs into male bodies.

Just like my 5ft 4 frame will never be 6ft, I must accept that. Wanting something does not mean they should have access to it.
And it should NEVER be available on the NHS.

My personal opinion is that it will never happen anyway, it's science fiction of the highest order. We don't even understand the complex cascade of events that happens in a normal pregnancy, never mind adding in cross sex complications into that mix.
And if it did ever happen - time for a huge fucking asteroid ASAP.

Of course it should not be subsidised.

No, they can pay for their own Mengele-grade experiments, if they can find a surgical team unethical enough to carry them out.

MN just ate my long answer 😭

Short answer: absolutely not!
• There are “clinicians” who say not to vaccinate your kids because vaccines are toxic & cause autism; who say covid is just a cold [best treated with horse wormer]; & who say puberty blockers are “safe & reversible” (outwith usage in precocious puberty). Some clinicians maintaining something so patently false & ridiculous is hardly surprising, though always disappointing.
• Despite fact it is a nonsense, it is not innocuous to discuss ethics, particularly in context given by article. Giving impression it is anything other than a thought experiment is cruel to those TW who need psychological support to come to terms with the reality they cannot change sex; not false hope about uterus implants (which is what TW would receive were such a thing to become possible).
• The wall of Bad TRA Science against which we routinely find ourselves banging our heads requires no fortification.

I think the most prescient ethical issue would be it's essentially experimenting on babies. The cocktail of anti-rejection drugs and hormones you would need to sustain a pregnancy in a man would be dreadful.

Considering women are made to feel like evil scum if they take a painkiller, have a glass of wine or take needed MH medication or chemo, I don't see how you can square this ethically. Thalidomide was very effective for nausea in pregnancy. It's not available now for a reason.

The short answer is a loud & clear 'no'.

It is an ethics paper and an American one at that, so lots of the discussion about funding etc simply does not apply to the UK and the NHS. I'm not going to get too exercised about an ethics paper right now, though we should always keep this on our radar for the future - a Frankenstein Watch, if you like.

I don't understand two points they make. One is about tw who want a uterine implant (not transplant) when they have no intention of gestating a child, to use the chilly language of the authors, but they want one for validation purposes. How far can any unseen and unfelt body part do that? Or will the use of the necessary drugs to prevent rejection etc achieve that goal for them?

The other thing is the notion of transplantation of a uterus into a tm who once had one provided by nature but has it no longer. To my knowledge, this will often have been removed because of the effects of exogenous testosterone. So how and why would you carry out a Utx on a natal female who is taking T? I imagine the new uterus would atrophy and cause problems, same as the old one.

No fucking way.

Did anyone see that person who wanted to be the first transwoman to have a uterus transplant specifically so they could then have an abortion?

This is so abhorrent that I cannot believe any surgeon would do this.
it smacks of Mengele and Frankenstein.

If you can't even test something as benign as paracetamol on children or pregnant women (if it hadn't already been an approved drug) how the hell is it ethical to try to gestate a child in a body not designed for it?

The important bit of becoming a parent isn't the actual conception its the putting someone else before yourself and doing whats best for them not you.

Short answer: No

Long answer: Hell No.

And how did this end up as a discussion on ethics? I'd consider any moves towards uterus implants to be highly unethical and grotesque let alone subsidizing such processes.

This definitely falls into the just because you can doesn't mean you should category.

And it's not me being transphobic. I don't agree with this sorf of thing from woman to woman. I know it's been done successfully that way, but I don't agree with that either.

Transplants have their place. Science is amazing and if someone's life can be saved with a heart transplant then the benefits outweighs the risk and the life long taking of medication and complications that come with organ donation will be born by the person receiving the transplant.

But uterus transplants? NO!

I took myself off the organ donation register a few years ago, in part because of stuff like this.

Whoops! I meant to "what?!?!?!?!" this quote. Apologies

Thanks for all these thoughtful comments. In a world where a Journal of Ethics can recommend uterus transplants for men, the sane voices on Mumsnet’s feminist boards keep me from despair.

There's a video out there somewhere where TW says this. It's a horrible video

Anyone who's been pregnant or involved with birth knows that this isn't possible and certainly not ethical. But, who would have thought that medically experimenting on children using off label drugs with no supporting data and research would ever happen in this country with our tight regulations? Yet unbelievably it is the norm for a vulnerable cohort of children in the NHS via the GIDS services.

So experimenting on babies in the womb for these twisted medics and the queer theory activists who support them is the logical next step and we must always be alert to their next demands.

If uterus transplant were possible, it is unlikely a trans woman would get to the top of the waiting list before an infertile woman.

And surely the priority should be infertile women.

If you're having a child as a way of regulating/soothing your own 'psychological dissonance' then I suggest you shouldn't have a child!

Babies should be born into families where they'll be loved, nurtured, grown into healthy, stable adults, not born to 'fix' their parent's dysphoria.

This makes me feel really sad.

I don't know why they always word this hypothetical procedure as being for "trans women". If this procedure becomes available it will become available for all men. And probably you will have a better chance of success if you haven't already spent years your life taking medications and surgically altering your body. Also "trans men's uteruses might already be a bit fucked due to testosterone usage and not much good for womb transplants.

Anyone remember that doctor a few years ago who said he was looking for someone to do a head transplant on? He said the technology was there - he was definitely ready and able to do it.

No? Uterus transplants in male bodies are the same - just around the corner my arse.

When they get some poor male pig pregnant without sewing him up to some poor sow, and he and the piglets are still alive and healthy at the end, then I'll take notice.

Weird how they don't seem to be giving the same amount of headspace to penis transplants for transmen which you feel should be easier*

(*Not easy because human bodies are not plug and play as every fule kno)

It would be Unit 731 level of medical experimentation. The sort of thing that should be restricted to horror/sci-fi novels and not done IRL.

IIRC Lili Elbe died due to a uterine transplant and the entirely predictable comlications. I don't know if they had anti-regection drugs back then (which are pretty brutal in their own right).

I think that it is always worth remembering that this kind of experiment starts with a healthy body. If you go back into the patient's history to pre any medical intervention, you find a healthy body at the start that functions and works as nature intended. This isn't fixing an injury, curing a disease or cutting out a tumour. It is completely different.

Uterus implants (they are not replacing an organ, they are adding one that should never be there) have been discussed in great detail on FWR. Subsidising them, though? No fucking way that should be happening !

There was an experiment with rats where they implanted a uterus in to males and tried to gestate a pregnancy? It required a female to be surgically attached and to share a blood supply and even then nearly all the pregnancies failed.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/study-that-impregnated-male-rats-stirs-controversy-68928