Transgender women dream of being pregnant - very soon could be reality

I had been trying to tell you all about this in the past.
For those of you who said transgender women will "never be a woman because they can't have a baby".

With womb transplants a reality, transgender women dare to dream of pregnancies

It would require a grueling series of operations, but transgender women now see hope that they could one day become pregnant — despite having been born biological males — thanks to pioneering uterus transplant surgery.

“I hope it becomes a reality,” said Chastity Bowick, 30, a medical case manager in Worcester, Mass. “I absolutely would be willing to do it.”

Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic on introduced the recipient of the nation’s first uterus transplant, performed late last month. The 26-year-old patient, identified only as Lindsey, said she has adopted three boys through foster care but has always dreamed of the opportunity to carry a child. The Cleveland Clinic team plans to do at least nine more transplants as part of a clinical trial.

It is theoretically possible to transplant a uterus into someone who was born male. But the body would need a lot of preparation. Gender reassignment surgery would be much more involved, for one thing. As with traditional male-to-female surgery, doctors would have to create a vaginal canal. But they would also need to make space for the uterus. That would require widening the pelvic inlet, which is substantially narrower in men.

After all that, the patient would need about a year to heal before undergoing the womb transplant — which in itself is quite an ordeal. The first one performed in the United States took nine hours.

If the transgender woman had stored sperm before transitioning, she could use it to fertilize a donor egg for implantation, so her baby would be genetically related to her. Careful administration of hormones would help the patient sustain her pregnancy, which would require close monitoring.

Any patient with a uterus transplant would also have to take powerful drugs to prevent her body from rejecting the donor organ. (For that reason, the transplants are designed to be temporary; surgeons plan to remove the donated womb after the recipient has carried a pregnancy or two to term.)

The many steps would make an already tough process even more difficult and expensive for transgender women.

Bowick is undeterred. “Being a trans woman is already complicated,” she said. “And pregnancy would be a beautiful thing — even the morning sickness. I mean, I’m kind of getting that now anyway, from the hormones. And I’m moody,” she laughed. “After all I’ve gone through, I’m up for any challenge.”

That commitment doesn’t surprise psychologist Deborah Simmons, who works with couples on surrogacy and fertility issues from her practice in Minnetonka, Minn.“If you’re a trans woman, this is a way of completing the dream,” she said. “Looking like a woman, feeling like a woman, and being able to bear a child like a woman. The whole notion of being like anyone else who wants to carry a baby — the opportunity for that is blowing people’s minds, in a good way.”

Angelica Ross, the chief executive of TransTech Social Enterprises in Chicago, said transgender women may have trouble taking advantage of uterine transplants because many have faced discrimination in the past and, thus, lack the financial resources to pay for multiple surgeries.​

https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/07/uterine-transplant-transgender/

Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done.


related thread: Trans-woman breast feeds baby after hospital induces lactation

 

Trans gender does not equate to trans genetics.
Womb or no womb, a human body born as a male was not built to handle child birth.

What bothers me is that the taxpayer will probably be on the hook for all of this and it will be mega expensive.

 

Doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done either.

as to who would pay for it, that is a whole other topic and thread. Discussions on whether or not a certain procedure should be done or not, is irrelavent to who foots the bill. Quite honestly, most of the things, good or services (surgery would fall under service), when they first come out are reachable only by the more well off. And then it works it way down. Some move faster than others.

 

This is true but why do you feel this applies here?

Americans are reproducing at below replacement rates, more and more children are being born into homes that do not want them or do not have the ability to care for them — allowing womb transplants will help biological women that have medical conditions to have children and will eventually lead to wombs and births outside the body completely.

Why should transexual people be barred from this process?

 

As a very strong Libertarian, I do not (necessarily) believe they should be barred from this process, but that does not mean I think it is a good idea for them to do it.
I also see some potential ethical issues about starting a new life growing inside a transplanted uterus inside a man.
Again, I will ask the question, how would YOU like to grow inside a transplanted uterus inside a transgender woman's body? This is an issue that not only affects/concerns "her".

 

Cis people talking about trans people is cute.

The op is bringing up an interesting point but one of the big things the op forgot is trans youth. The issue with the pelvic can be solved with hormones if I’m remembering correctly. That means if trans youth take hormones before puberty, you can get around that issue.

 

As long as you do not attempt to intervene in others lives I cannot fault you for having a belief.

Such as?

As long as I was born healthy and into a family that cared for me and didn’t abuse me I would consider myself blessed. They will likely have some hard times ahead — not because of their family but because of the little monsters raised by bigots.

I do think this will present an interesting scenario for many on the pro-birth side of the equation however.

 

Potentially yes, but there are a whole bunch of other issues with starting children on these hormones when they're very young. (Mainly being that many of them will later come to regret it)

And in addition to that, perhaps I am wrong here, but I believe structure of pelvic shape would only be partially affected by hormones, there may also be some genetic component, in addition to hormonal dependence. That is, even if you pumped lots of hormones into a young boy, his pelvis might still not exactly become as wide as a woman's.

 

A young trans woman? Yeah more or less. But that applies to woman too.

 

It seems to me that if part of the answer to the question regards inadequate birth rates then a much simpler approach by society would be to ban abortion and provide for better care of unwanted children that may not have the luck to be adopted, and maybe to offer better options for childcare and education in general than to debate the moral, ethical or cost effectiveness of a cis or trans womb transplant with respect to its contribution to birth rate improvement.

 

I don't see an issue. I would have grown up with the person, been loved by them, cared for by them, and they would be my mom.

 

Maybe, maybe not. There are issues that can arise from doing hormone therapy prior to and during puberty. It's one of those things that looked good initially on paper, but the partical use jury is still out. Theory to practice and all that. I know I've been seeing some concerns with MtF teens getting hormone blockers, and then not having enough penile material to do the angoplasty (I think I have the right procedure). There might need to be some more study before all the side effects become known. Although people should of course be allowed to volunteer to help in the studies.

 

These improvements do not have to happen in a vacuum.
There is no argument that increasing childcare outcomes would benefit the nation and the womb transplantation could happen simultaneously.

 

It is not good for the child. Imagine how you would feel if you were born as a science experiment to gratify the fantasies of a mentally ill man.

 

Wait. You constantly harp on forcing a woman to bring an unwanted child into the world, yet suddenly balk at allowing a
wanted child to be born. If you are pro-life, then it shouldn't matter how that life is created, unless you are just giving "life" lip service.

 

I am not pro-life. Where did you get that idea?

I object to creating life to satisfy a sick person's narcissism.

 

Please post a study showing “it is not good for the child”.

I would rather be born as a advancement of scientific process than by accident to a family that doesn’t want me.

 

My thought is this. When the used to be boy is pregnant and the baby must be delivered via surgery, where is the "natural" experience here? How many other places in medical science does someone get to play fancy dress up at the expense of everyone else to enable it?

 

Do you disagree with fertility treatments?
Surrogacy?

 

How do you know that?

 

Yes and yes. Especially surrogacy. That is akin to slavery: trading in human beings.

 

So now cesarean section’s are bad?
Who is paying for others to get womb implants?
How is “everyone else” enabling it?

 

Because you asked my opinion — that is my opinion.
Maybe it isn’t yours but you asked for me to “imagine” mine.

Still waiting on the source I requested...

 

You do not understand the definition of the word slavery if you believe surrogacy is similar.

 

Thanks for that helpful bit of child endangerment theory..... If the 7 yo told you they wanted to be a dog because they "believed" in it, would you enable that as well?? Look. my experience with folks who were "trans" has been they were "trans" because they were so traumatized at the fact they were gay they couldn't come to grips with it. They couldn't reconcile their attraction to the same sex so, they found a way to "fix" it so that they could be attracted to straight members of the same sex without repulsing them. There actually is a difference between folks who actually are women, and those who simply want to be women and vice versa. For many of them, the stigma of being "gay" is too much for them to cope with, but transitioning into the opposite sex seems a curative option because they cannot imagine being happy as gay folk. This may be limited to my experience, and I understand that there might be those who this doesn't compute with. That said, it still doesn't mean that medically creating "normalcy" via medical process is either ethical or responsible in my opinion.