Men who transitioned to women are now wondering how they can get pregnant and have a child, according to an op-ed in Scientific America.
Mats Brannstrom, a doctor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, performed the first successful uterine transplant in a woman two years ago. He oversaw the successful birth of her child shortly after. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States also performed one of the first successful uterine transplants in a 26-year-old infertile woman.
These transplants have transgender people asking their doctors if the surgeries can be performed on them, so they can carry and give birth to their own children.
“Ever since I was old enough to understand the concept of parenting, I wanted to be a mother,” she said. “I didn’t know how that would ever happen, but that’s what I wanted,” Chastity Bowick, a transgender medical case manager, told StatNews.
Joshua Safer, a endocrinologist at Boston Medical Center, noted that some of his patients have asked about the possibility of transplants, according to Scientific America. Other doctors, like Cecile Unger at Cleveland Medical, have had small portions of their transgender patients ask about it — they also ask if they should have the gender re-assignment surgery at the same time as the transplant.
The procedure is still experimental, even in women, and there are no definite answers as to whether a uterine transplants would work for a transgender women. Doctors cite major barriers for transgender women — namely, the right hormonal balance.
Marci Bowers, a gynecological surgeon, told Scientific America that one of her concerns is a potentially hostile environment for the fetus.
Giuliano Testa, a transplant surgeon at Baylor University Medical Center, also told Scientific America that though he would never perform that type of surgery, it is still a possibility to happen. “At the end of the day it is two arteries and two veins that are connected with fine surgical techniques.”
A professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University, Mark Sauer, told Scientific America, “A lot of this work [in women] is intended to go down that road but no one is talking about that.”
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