Womb Transplant Doctor Says its ‘Medically Possible’ for Transgender Women to Give Birth
One of the leading surgeons researching and providing womb transplants believes that it is “medically possible” that in the future, transgender-identifying women, or biological males, will be able to birth their own children.
Dr. Paige Porrett, the lead surgeon at the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), told the Daily Mail that men who identify as women will potentially have the ability to grow their own children if they’ve undergone a sex change surgery.
“I think there’s a lot of providers, such as myself, who would envision that is the case,” Dr. Porrett said. “I think that it is certainly medically possible. The future is wide open.”
Dr. Porrett said that there could be an increased risk, due to the hormone usage, and prior “gender-affirming” surgeries that may cause irreparable harm. Because of the risks posed by the complex and experimental surgery, Dr. Porrett didn’t want to place a “timeline” on when this might be offered to men identifying as women.
Daily Mail reports that the procedure is “already considered high-risk” for women, therefore “Doing this in a transgender woman, especially one who still has male sex organs, would be even more difficult due to those anatomical differences.” The report also notes that “Hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment surgery could make it more difficult for a trans patient to produce enough eggs for IVF, which is part of the transplant protocol.”
Robyn Horsager-Boehrer, an M.D. in Obstetrics and Gynecology, stated that the womb transplant “procedure carries considerable risks that outweigh its potential benefits.”
The first womb transplant occurred in Saudi Arabia in 2000, when a 26-year-old woman suffered a postpartum hemorrhage after a cesarean section, resulting in a medically necessary hysterectomy. “She had to have it removed after three months,” Dr. Horsager-Boehrer wrote.
In 2014, a 35-year-old woman received a womb transplant and gave birth to her child, who was born two months premature.
Dr. Horsager-Boehrer explains that there are several risks and complications associated with the risky procedure, including blood loss requiring transfusion, infection, organ rejection, and the potential for adverse reactions to anti-rejection medications.
The concept for the surgery stems from the modern belief that adults have the “right” to biological children. This is the same line of logic followed for IVF procedures, which have been described by some as callus and “transactional.”
“There’s not many transplant surgeons like myself, either in the States or in the world, frankly, that can do this procedure,” Dr Porrett said. “It’s a big operation.”
The Daily Mail reported that the procedure takes approximately 18 months, on average, to complete.
Advancements in medical technology sometimes ignore ethical concerns — what is medically possible may not always be what is right. The primary “right” in question, is not whether or not men have the right to give birth, but whether or not a child has a natural right to his or her biological mother and father. Of course, that answer will always be, yes. Children do not exist to satisfy the whims and predacious desires of adults.
