Womb Transplants

[JumpingPumpkin]

Just heard the news on R4 of a successful pregnancy from a womb transplant in this country. Paid for by a charity “womb transplant U.K.”. Finished the report with a question as to the ethics and “it gives women an alternative to surrogacy or adoption”.

This just seems unethical to me.

As I recall the lambs in bags were for prematurely born lambs, just for the last few weeks to get them there, it's not possible to grow a foetus outside of a female body.

And they want a second one. I was surprised at that - although maybe once the reality of parenthood might cure that?!

My first thought, when I saw this story, was that the trans women are going to be leaping on this as ‘proof’ that they can get womb transplants and give birth - they will not give a single damn about the actual, biological woman who has to give up her uterus, or to the possible risks to the foetus of the anti rejection medications. Not to mention the fact that sustaining a pregnancy involves a complex mix of hormones etc that the female body is set up to produce, but that, in a trans woman with a transplanted uterus, would have to be provided, and balanced, with synthetic hormones on an almost daily basis.

Are the concerns around anti rejection medication reasonable? Isn’t there a lot of research and evidence from women who’ve had eg kidney transplants and are taking anti rejection medication while pregnant?

WHO is wrong.

I'm infertile. I've had all my reproductive organs removed. I would need a uterine transplant to carry a pregnancy. Is this an illness that I need treatment for?

Huge concerns regarding the potential exploitation of womb donors/organ trafficking.

This was a genuinely altruistic donation, but of course, if this becomes mainstream, there will be inevitably exploitation of desperate women. Isn’t there enough of this already?

My second concern is attempts on this on males somewhere down the line.

Okay, I had to listen back to him as I wasn't quoting him verbatim, I was just surprised at his response 😁 He said "I had not thought of that, that is....I don't know .. I'm not qualified 😂
I mean, it's just "no"

Everything you say is a crushing inevitably.

More harm coming to women.

Stop the world I want to get off.

If none of her specialists seem interested in the cause then how do you know that the cause is likely to be the IVF?

They don’t know, they are presuming. The first IVF babies are 46, if the treatment caused long term health damage we would know by now.

But an illness isn't only an illness if it requires treatment. I have endometriosis which is classed as an illness. I don't need treatment as I don't think that the treatments would be proportionate to the illnesss. It doesn't stop it from being an illness.

I was surprised to read about this, don't anti-rejection drugs harm the foetus? It says the uterus will be removed after the mother's second pregnancy (if she succeeds in having one) because of the cancer risk from taking anti-rejection drugs. I hope the baby does not turn out to have been affected in some way not obvious yet.

I hope @nauticant won't mind but here is what she said on a recent thread about the ethical implications of implanting a womb in a male body.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5303701-ama-journal-of-ethics-june-2023?reply=143263502

nauticant · 28/03/2025 16:01
I'll write what I always write when this comes up. This business of uterus "transplants" into men appears to be about science but it is not. It's about getting the idea out there that men can give birth too, but not just yet, there are a few technical details to be sorted out first. So while we're waiting for the inevitable, let's get on with the social sciences side of things and accept that since men can give birth too (not yet, but soon, soon, it's bound to happen), then there are no real differences between men and women in terms of things that are material and significant, they're just bodies with an interchangable set of parts. The actual differences are surface ones like the chosen forms of appearance.

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.

Getting back to the main topic of the thread, I can't see this ever becoming a commonplace operation because of the complexity and expense. Most women who for one reason or another can't become pregnant or want a child but don't want to go through a pregnancy/birth will choose surrogacy in countries where that's possible. For the 'commissioning' parent(s) there is no risk to their own health. They are not encouraged to think about the fact that women who donate eggs are taking a risk with their health, the surrogate will have a high-risk pregnancy and the baby will be removed at birth from the only parent s/he has ever known, which is inevitably going to be traumatic.

A small number may go for adoption instead, but in the UK this is not an easy option.

As others have said, it would be better to help people with infertility come to terms with not having children. It's not a human right and our planet is already dangerously overpopulated with humans.

Yes ideally we'd have a medical system that worked for everyone, chronically ill and disabled people would have everything they need, families with disabled children would have all the support and resources and schools and those children would have supported education. It isn't going to happen any time soon, if at all, and in this country right now benefits are being cut to people who likely won't be able to survive without them. Families with disabled children are about to be told there are strict limits to what they can have and to get used to having a lot less and to needs going unmet.

It would be lovely if everything worked for everyone and we could just 'manage our resources' but realistically, what matters more? A very very expensive and huge committment of time and medical care/staff to one woman who may end with a live birth - and she and the child may end up being lifelong patients who experience no resources to follow on from their initial medical miracle to actually get through life with -

or do we accept at the moment that when people need cancer treatment before they die and disabled people need to afford to live, and people need hospice beds not to die in agony, and disabled children need access to education that there's a few things that need to come first before a woman who'd like to have a child by giving birth to it herself? And that the next 20 years or so are largely to be very much about living within our means without things we've become used to?

It's rather like the passionate arguments to save a fetus from abortion in the US states who then lose all interest in the child actually eating, surviving and staying out of care once it's actually born. The reality of context does matter. Not least at all to this child being created.

This is very very very luxury medicine. Very. With huge ethical issues unaddressed.

The woman who gave birth used her own eggs and husband’s sperm. Seems to me it would be better for the donor sister to have the embryo transplanted and bear the child for her sister. This has been done before. The health risks for all concerned would be much lower.

And I understand there is evidence for some babies conceived via IVF having health problems later in life. Just not publicised (for obvious reasons).

That doesn’t surprise me at all.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3650450/

effects of IVF on mothers and babies.

Because her symptoms are those that have been reported for Lupron, which I believe was a drug used in the UK at the time in fertility. But I could be wrong. Yet all the things that are happening to her are the symptoms align with what was reported from using Lupron. She had multiple treatments.

And also
The donated womb will be removed after the birth of a second child. This will allow Grace to stop taking the daily immunosuppressants she is currently on to ensure her body does not reject her sister's womb. Taking these drugs can increase the risks of developing some cancers, especially if taken over many years - but surgeon Isabel Quiroga says these risks should return to baseline once the womb is removed.
Does this also mean that the baby is at an increased risk of cancer having been exposed to them during gestation?

I believe there is a trans woman who has said he wants to get an underused transplant because he wants to get pregnant and be the first trans woman to have an abortion!!. This, to me, speaks volumes about his view of the uterus and the foetus as simply props for his belief that he is a woman, and it sickens me.

Argh - a uterus transplant, not an underused one. Fat fingers!

Well, he probably wouldn't want an overused one, to be fair ...

........

He wants a woman's body part expensively planted medically into his body and a high amount of chemicals forced into him and the fetus, to then intentionally kill the fetus. To fulfil some inner goal.

There aren't enough psychiatrists for this. Or enough glue. That's pathological as much as utterly foul.

I am uncomfortable with surrogacy in situations where the mother is perfectly capable of carrying her own child. Where she's not, or its a same sex relationship, I'm okay with that as long as all parties are consenting and there's none or minor health risks involved. I'm equally okay with womb transplants as long as again, all parties are consenting and there's none to minor health risks.